


THE FOXES IN ARKHAM

by Steviekay101



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: Cosmicism, Cthulhu Mythos, Gen, HP Lovecraft, Lovecraftian, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Lovecraftian Romance, M/M, aftg, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27598094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steviekay101/pseuds/Steviekay101
Summary: Neil Josten - math teacher, in the prime of his life - returns to his hometown of Arkham, Massachusetts to find EVERYTHING... Exactly as he remembered: sick, dull, sullen, and corrupt.The only new addition is a horror the Moriyama clan unleashed with grave repercussions in a 'scorched earth' attempt to claim power.
Relationships: Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau, Kevin Day/Neil Josten, Matt Boyd & Neil Josten, Neil Josten & Renee Walker, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Riko Moriyama
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	1. CHAPTER 1.

CHAPTER 1.

_Dearest lover, is it insanity to dream of death? A painful stinging of one's flesh and nerves, matched only by the lonesome sting of cracked, moldy walls closing in on your psyche upon one's heart? Lusting for relief. I fear I am not long for this world, my love, my friend, my light through the cracks of the asylum that traps my silence; a silence broken by the pattering of rain, accompanied like drums to an orchestra, by the screams of the insane of which I fear to become myself. Through madness and sanity I am forever yours, Andrew Minyard..._

Neil Josten crumpled the dated letters in his pocket for reassurance that things could be okay as he was never one for the sea. Traveling from the southernmost point of the Carolinas up along the Atlantic coastline to the cold, wet landscapes of seabearing Arkham - Nathaniel "Neil" Abram Wesninski Josten hated the water. Was it a fear of his to drown, as a man haunted by the touch of other people, did he too fear the icy grip of the North Atlantic water? Perhaps he was afraid of what was in the water, as it was one thing to drown by choice or by accident, and another ordeal to be drowned by force. The rocking of the boat he lazily sat upon approached the docks of Arkham, with hands on his wobbly knees, he glimpsed at the decaying green and yellow glow of limescale and moss faintly illuminated under the hollowed flicker of the flames of street lamps in a city not yet exposed to widespread electricity - until then it was only used in laboratories by those unafraid of the devils and gods they attempt to channel and imitate in experimentation. The brisk ocean mist dampened Neil's blood orange hair and caused him to shudder in remembrance of his childhood: he had gotten comfortable moving back and forth between Baltimore and Arkham, for as long as he'd known, his parents were estranged until his mother died of tuberculosis in Arkham's general hospital. He ended up finding a home in Baltimore… Well, actually Neil never had a home, that is until he returned to Arkham and enrolled in the Rhode Island University Department of Mathematics and met Andrew: then Mr. Minyard became the home Neil knew so well, whether it was at Arkham or in the Carolinian South. Neil Josten, a modestly short, scarred figure of rambunctious youth; if not for his reclusive nature, he and his childlike appearances, crossed with the wrinkled crow lines of age, would have been a most peculiar bachelor. Alas, he was not set for that life of publicity, growing uncomfortable with attention after walking in and being grappled by his father's blood stained hand, wiping onto the silky garbs that teenage Neil wore years ago. The media sensation behind the self proclaimed "butcher of Baltimore" is what ultimately drew Neil away from his hometown to Arkham where he met a host of individuals: among them were two young men by the names of Andrew Minyard, and Kevin Day. Neil once knew the mad massacrist as father; having escaped the law, and hiding as a banal slaughterer, he was driven mad by boredom, and paranoia. _He had gone insane,_ the coroner suggested to then 19 year old neil; his repetitious slaughter of lamb and cattle grew irreplaceable to the once grueling slice of human flesh - the murderous butcher proceeded to chop his own fingers, hand, and forearm, seemingly possessed by the ghosts of his grisly past or a spectre of some unnatural horror, as he did not stop until Neil wrestled the blade from his father's bloody hand - already legless and missing an arm. The butcher's blood soaked Josten's shirt; the warm blood somehow coldly dripped down Neil's hairless chest, slowed only by the strands of hair that stripped down his navel as he watched his father helplessly condemned to die. As the cold mist blew through Neil's hair, he imagined drowning would feel the same way.

As the ship rocked against the shallowing waters of Arkham's shoreline, Neil's stomach groaned queasily as he heaved and rubbed his pounding temple, holding in whatever slime accumulated in his stomach in replacement of food.

"Mr Josten, I see you're awake" Captain Wymack - a burly tattooed man of vague Samoan appearance said as he gripped Neil's shoulders, looking around to a scrambling crew hoisting the ropes and tieing down rocking barrels of rum and spices. Neil could smell the salt on Wymack's beard, sour as it tinged with rum and a hint of pork, dried and cured. It did nothing for Neil's nausea. An interesting man, that firm stump of a captain, he spent his early years sailing the world for whoever paid the highest - no cost was too much to risk his life - and though Neil did not expect to board the Foxhole ship when he planned his voyage to Arkham, it was the only vessel willing to go to Arkham. Neil, in an attempt to stabilize his mind and stomach as the ship approached the docks ever so slowly to avoid the rocks of the shallowing waters, recollected memories that Wynack shared over dinners on the ship.

After some shady business transactions with the Oriental easterners, a young Wymack and a younger Foxhole ship found itself in the South China sea, sailing towards the kingdom of Hawaii then to California; when Neil asked why he didn't sail north to the Bering and down the Alaskan coast, as it was shorter, Wymack chuckled and exclaimed that sailors will always complain, so as Captain it's his job to guarantee they don't complain about the weather. Wymack's chuckle faded as he proceeded to tell Neil and the newer members of his recent crew what happened in his voyage to Hawaii.

_"Well after collecting what I went to collect, the crew and I set sail towards the Kingdom of Hawaii and all was good; it was calm; it was unusual. You see, a sailor - an exceptionally good sailor - is never comfortable in calm Waters; he is always trained and ready for a storm which is why it surprised me that our trip towards Hawaii was so seemingly calm and easy. We ended up docking on an island on the south side of Polynesia because any sailor worth his weight in salt will tell you there is always a calm before the storm and I knew that the weather like this meant disaster was on the horizon. Little did I or the soon-to-be deceased members of my crew knowingly expected that the disaster awaited us on the mysterious Island. We set up base camp for the first night on the beach right next to our docked ship and that's when trouble began. We heard from deep within the island ungodly sounds of whimpering, clamoring with the moaning howls, and heavy branches clapped together resonated eerie unfamiliar echoes throughout the island. Most of the crew did not sleep the first night just to see if the tribal chantings would cease or become more prominent, louder. The next day we learned we must have fallen asleep for an hour or so; after we woke we noticed whoever or whatever made those primitive noises the previous night had left piles of rocks by the base of our camp - they were watching us as we slept, perhaps signifying our presence. The crew and I assembled our gear and I left a barrel of opium from Japan for the locals to enjoy. As we set sail, a crewman noticed that indeed a storm was approaching and it was unwise to sail far lest we risk capsizing. Deciding not to risk the storm, we returned to the island we just left to see the opium was gone... even as we were leaving, they, whoever or whatever they were, were watching us. We couldn't make our base camp on the beach as the storm kicked in so mustering up whatever tools and equipment we needed as well as supplies, we headed inland closer than we wanted to get to the locals."_

Wymack sipped his rum, and swallowed hard, as if trying to hold down and suppress the true nature of the horrors he saw, but continued, choosing his words like navigating through a minefield, as if to slowly release the building pressure of a valve so to not create an eruption of disastrous proportions.

_"Women, obese and fertile, drudging along the village we came across, carrying their young in their arms; the men if you can call them man, were yelping guttural chants more animalistic than the night before. As we watched from the forested cover, the rain and wind began pouring in a distance, yet not on the island itself - the men grunted and scattered in all directions, panicking our crew if they were to stumble upon us peering at them. The storm it seemed was conjured to keep us trapped on the island, as when we returned to the ship, the natives were scouring the beaches clapping their branches and moaning yelps. We decided to make a break for the ship - risking capsizing in the open sea - desperate to get away from here. Running through the sand, we abandoned our gear and scattered like ants from a kicked over colony as the male natives charged us with low sounding groans, like a bellowing cow crossed with the heaving of a man on the verge of vomiting. Satchel, the youngest of my crew, was tackled by two men as they bit into his shirt, tearing it with their teeth as he screamed for mercy. They pierced his spine with a sharpened rock and left him paralyzed on the sand as the assault continued. Were they mindless on opium, exposed to a drug they never knew? Or cannibals whose nationalist privacy meant murdering all foreigners with no hesitations? I doubted that theory as they didn't kill us the night before. This was different. The storm, the spying… this was planned. They meant to trap us. I lost 7 men to the savages before the crew and I hoisted the anchor and sailed, watching their terrified eyes cry out in desperation as they were being dragged inland, to be eaten, or sacrificed, I do not know, only that they would be alive through the entire process."_

Neil momentarily forgot his nausea as he looked up at Wymack and wondered what compelled a man to risk his life, not only for the sea but for anything - for love, for fortune, for god and country - what was in it for them? Neil struggled to get to his feet, seemingly breathless as the crew rolled barrels of opium and spices to the lower decks. "Don't force yourself to get up, ya ain't get your sea legs" Wymack grunted, pushing Neil back down. His fuzzy vision and dizzying headaches only seemed to worsen the closer the ship called Foxhole approached the loading docks. Neil wondered whether or not this was a good idea, returning to Arkham - after 15 years and 3 weeks to his calculation - was it worth it to see Andrew? Was this his life risk? For love? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows what secrets remain unsolved for Neil. He left Arkham once Andrew had been institutionalized, in the hope that their chances to be together would be better if at least one of them was walking free. He only returned, boarding Wymack's ship in southern Carolina because of Andrew's hauntingly recent letter.

_Dear Neil, saints and harlots plagued the dank streets like rats with bulbous puss seeping from their fur: disgusting already by nature, but more so by the addition of the damp, sour atmosphere of permanent rot that plagued Arkham. I no longer eat, as I fear the food is tainted by doctors to subdue patients with hallucinogenic dreams_ _~~though I'm assured it is not the case~~. _ _"Is there a god? Perhaps not, for something far worse than the devil scares god from entering Arkham." That, my dear Josten, has been the mad ramblings of the Arab celled next to me, chanting his prayers for a god far from this continent to save him. I don't wish to talk to such a person, depressing yet full of hope. There is no hope, only certainty: certainty of death, and certainty of pain. I adored you most of all, but I will no longer partake in the realm of earthly judgement. Yours in madness, unfortunately, Andrew Minyard._

Neil clutched his suitcase, desperate to get to Andrew, ready to jump into the freezing Atlantic water as Wymack lousily placed his hand on Neil's shoulder. "No man is desperate to get to Arkham, unless he has loved ones to see, or money to collect" Wymack whispered. "And by the looks of it, you don't need money" Neil in contemplation, examined his clothing - a bit 19th century for the year he was in - dressed in a black waistcoat and white tie, over a grey dress shirt, neil stared down at his damp corduroys and brown brogue shoes, all covered in a beige coat, buttoned once in the middle. As the Foxhole ship got closer to the docks, Neil recalled what was Wymack's purpose for coming. " _Luckily for my delivery, my son is the mayor of Arkham; a young lad that's wise-beyond-his-years as the people who knew him said_ ". _His son_ Neil thought, _was mayor Kevin Day_? The Kevin he met all those years prior? He had always been Headstrong, always ready to defend the people of Arkham from outside political influences; he always saw himself as right and whether that righteousness came through forcefulness, Kevin did not care. His father was the same way. Josten reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bunch of scrap paper, written on each of them were letters by his soon-to-be husband Andrew Minyard, given to their mutual friend Renée Walker (a local priestess) to mail whenever she'd visit and seemingly "pray for Andrew's sinful ways to change", acting as correspondence between the two. Until marriage would be legalized between men, they struggled to keep their relationship Secret for Fears that Neil would end up in the same situation as Andrew. Mr. Minyard was a former student council president of Rhode Island's university department of Anthropology until he was discharged for what was described as "immoral sexual desires" who would later be locked away in Arkham's Easthaven asylum. Andrew wrote to Neil the ravings that inmates would spout about fishermen who'd return with empty nets and claims of monstrosities that stole their catches. Much like Wymack's tale, Neil did not know if it was the truth or the result of rum induced delirium. Neil would always write back, mailing his letters to Renée who'd deliver them to Andrew. Mr Minyard was strong spirited, and Neil knew that the asylum would not break Andrew immediately. However, 15 years and 3 weeks would break any man and Andrew's last delivered letter has Neil reflecting on his fiance's seemingly declining sanity.

"You have many friends in Arkham?", Wymack asked. "I know people, doesn't mean I'm friends with them", Neil coldly replied as the sailors unloaded their cargo on the recently docked ship. Wymack replied "nobody visits Arkham unless they know somebody who is trapped in this sickly town." Neil indeed had many friends during the time he spent in Arkham with Andrew, including Danielle and Matthew who ran the most popular pub in the city because of its location deep within, away from the waters; many flocked to the bar, drinking away their pain, including the young mayor at times. He was also friends with Allison, who came from unconventional wealth like Neil, though differed in that she _sought_ a life of adventure; a life away from her family of prohibitionists, smuggling alcohol from Canada to the east coast - but unfortunately it resulted in a life of desperate prostitution, selling her soul to the devils disguised as men. Nicky, a young queer man Neil almost claimed for his own, had left three years prior to Neil, moving to Germany where homosexuality was more accepted and lived with his Erik, a tall man with a heavy Germanic accent, reminiscent of the soldiers Nicky's father fought against in the world war. " _A homosexual in bed with the enemy, and you didn't expect my disapproval was inevitable"_ Nicky would often say in his father's midwestern accent. After Arkham, Neil wished to visit Nicholas but would risk the newly invented flights of the Aeroplane than to travel with Andrew by boat once again so soon. Then of course there was Renee and Seth; both were mysteries Neil had hoped to solve in his undesired visitation. Seth was murdered, during a time in Arkham known as _the invasion_. Wymack's trips to Japan and his frequent purchases of opium were not spontaneous - he had established a great deal of wealth transporting the drug for the Moriyama clam. The Moriyama's opium trade had made its way from greater Asia through war-torn Europe after the war, and eventually found its way across the ocean to the American continent. Within that time, Seth, who was a local chef of a seaside restaurant, did not want the kitchen to be used as a storage facility for what he called "Asian creatures and their sinful dealings". Riko Moriyama, heir to the second largest drug empire in America (second to the booze) saw to it that Seth would die as an example of Riko's strength and ferocity, though it was never proven: his body was never recovered and the official police report charged the negro waiter Roland, to the satisfaction of Arkham's citizenry. Neil never got to know Seth much but Andrew enjoyed dining at the restaurant "Edens Twilight: The Exyllent Eatery". And lastly there was Renée, a religious girl with hopes of becoming a doctor to treat those afflicted with griefs of the mind. Neil did not believe in the Hokey Pokey mumbo jumbo that was Christianity, however Renée was much more than a bible thumper; she was loyal, fierce, unwavering in her beliefs, and mysteriously, she converted after a fishing trip to a religion one could only describe as having cultish implications, according to Andrew's letters to Neil whenever Renée would visit. Neil was hoping that he would find Renée to try and better understand why she had done what she had done and become who she had become as she offered no explanation to Andrew other than "only the oldest ones know the oldest truth". Perhaps it was Seth's untimely death, or the sudden flow of opium through Arkham's deranged streets that broke the faith in Renée and led to her conversion. In time though, Neil would find this mystery to be his deepest regret.


	2. CHAPTER 2.

CHAPTER 2.

As Neil departed from the Foxhole, he affirmatively shook Captain Wymack's hand, assuring him that if he got the opportunity to meet Mayor Day, he'd let him know that his father was in town. Neil walked past the stalls of fish and clams, holding his breath as he was still getting over his infuriating stomach troubles. Making his way west, Neil navigated the winding mazes that encircled Arkham's inner city; the madness grew larger the deeper he got, and the silence got louder as Neil started to notice there were no birds around; he recalled Andrew mentioning that ancient humans used birds as indicators of predators, as they always took flight when there's was danger. He made his way onto Conch Street where he stood before a large, decrepit building of ancient decay, rotting away like the patrons within. He held his breath, hoping… nay praying… nay there was no God to pray to. He hoped. Nay hope was for the optimistic, and the optimist could not exist in Arkham. Neil decidedly held his breath and stood in silent contemplation of who he could willingly bear to see inside. Standing before the Black Rod Tavern, Neil considered walking away, heading back to the docks and boarding Wymack's ship, waiting for the next departure back to the Carolinian south. In one breath however, Neil pushed the slickly oiled surface of a moss covered door and entered. Having expected a crowd of familiar faces and music to serve as his solace oasis in this lifeless desert, he witnessed an empty depression of darkness whose only light shone towards Matthew or Matt, the chiseled Achilles of Arkham - his heel being the beloved wife Danielle or Dan as Nathaniel or Neil got to casually know her. Damn his optimism. Matt, a former rugby star of an eastern conference fame, fell injured and sought the doctors of Arkham to repair him only to never leave and open a bar, was himself the bartender and co-owner of Arkham's most populous "Black Rod Tavern", now resorted to sitting alone in the dimly lit establishment.

"The Josten from Boston, how the hell are ya?" Matt's eyes glowed with warm familiarity as Neil smiled, refusing to correct him with Baltimore. "I want waffles" Neil contemplated as Matt cracked hard-boiled eggs on the damp oak countertop to pickle and brine. With a smirk, Matt protested "Protein is good for you  _ but I guess _ if you want waffles I wouldn't want to be the one responsible for denying you pleasure in his sick town." As Neil pulled up a bar stool seat, he pondered at the dirty canvases that lined the walls of the drunkards sanctum - Matt exclaimed Dan usually cleans them, prompting Neil to ask where she was. As Matthew started to make half a dozen miniature waffles on a nearby stove, his smile dissipated like smoke in a heave and defeated sigh, rubbed his hands against the counter top of the bar. "I don't know where Dan went." Matt hesitantly grunted, "If she was kidnapped or killed, runoff, I wouldn't blame her… Had gone down to the fish market a few weeks ago, maybe a month, pick up some fish. We would fry it. Enjoy a brunch in memory of Seth… I don't know where Dan went. I don't know if she'll ever come back. But all I know is that I miss her And I love her, Neil-" Matt was astonished as Neil struggled to hold back tears, barely managing to whisper "this damn necropolis, ruins us all…" Neil didn't know how to respond to the emotions of someone so in love; he himself was in love with Andrew, or so he thought what they had was love. Neil couldn't tell for sure if his infatuation with Mr. Minyard was something of pleasure or of deep existential meaning, but he knew what made sense was Dan and Matt had it for each other - which is why it hurt him to see Matt in such a broken State of Affairs. The half dozen waffles that Matt had put on the stove came to a sizzle. Matt served three of them in a plate to Neil then three of them a plate for himself. "Do you have any syrup?" Neil asked, steering the conversation away from a topic he was too uncomfortable to engage on an empty stomach. "The sweetest of syrups is still sour and bitter and Arkham", Matt replied cynically; odd for a man of his known Behavior to sound so cynically, and yet Neil persisted for the syrup - insisting pancakes and waffles are better with syrup than with butter or honey. Matt handed the bottle to Neil in silence as the watered down syrup from the bottle oozed like wax from the melting candles that lit the empty, dust filled bar onto Neil's waffles, as he folded each one in half and ate them by hand to Matt's amusement. 

"Never one for a knife and fork" said a familiar voice from the inside of the recently cracked open door; as Neil consumed his folded waffles, Allison entered the Black Rod, disheveled yet carrying herself with the pretentiousness of a wealthy heiress. "Ally from Bali", Matt smiled as the silk-veiled heiress approached the bar, two stools down from Neil, who nodded at Allison, acknowledging her presence with a mouthful of waffles and lips dripping of bitter syrup. Allison laughed "you came all this way and  _ Matt _ is the first one you see and not me? You'd think in such a sick town you'd want to avoid  _ more _ unnecessary sicknesses". Matt stuck his tongue out in response to Allison's teasing. "What are you doing here?" Neil finally asked after forcefully swallowing his waffles. "In Arkham or in the Black Rod?" Allison responded "Well, you know what they say, Arkham  _ is _ the city of love… for a few bucks and a bottle of booze" as she removed her woollen shawl, folding the cheap, tattered cloth as if it were still the finest silks she was used to. Her exposed, milk white shoulders were bruised, gashes ran alongside her body that her translucent silk gown refused to hide, and as Matt awkwardly looked away at Allison's silk-covered breasts, Neil stared like a child examining a mouse caught in a trap now struggling to free itself yet slowly accepting the futility of its impending doom. With curiosity, Allison demanded to know why Neil's natural discomfort of sexual activity persisted after years of being scared of intimacy yet falling so deeply for Andrew. "As a man whose tendencies are strengthened by his desire to see Andrew, why are you still afraid of consummation?" Allison said, turning towards Neil, exposing more of her silk-covered body. Josten, unflinchingly responded "why aren't you? Why don't you stop this succubus lifestyle? You had money, you had family, you had a life to live and you threw it away for derangement and abuse." 

Allison snapped back "I could ask the same of you, Neil Minyard." Taken aback, Neil had become the mouse, struggling to free himself from the trap of sexual death - he was attracted to Andrew, but couldn't treat him the way Allison treated her customers; she was a picture-perfect princess, but could brawl with the best of them on the street. "So Neil" Matt interjected, "how have you been loving Arkham?"

_ Lovely _ Neil thought as his eyes locked with Allison's. She smiled a smile that could cut glass as her long painted periwinkle nails tapped the damp oak bar top, signaling Matt for a drink. Allison took a sip, the rim barely touching her bright red lips, asked in between subtle sips "What have you been upto?" Neil explained he was a mathematics teacher at a local high school in the Carolinian South as he enjoyed solving puzzles - it was one thing he could control - and math was just another puzzle for him. As the trio gulped a shot of aged whiskey that soured their mouths and burnt their chests for old time's sake, Neil couldn't help but wonder out loud where everyone else was in this hellhole as Matt returned the unopened bottles to the wine cellar. Allison excitingly forgot their bitter tasting conversation and regaled Neil with the story of a merry band of individuals and their whereabouts: a tale Neil would recall as he paid his tab to Matt, got directions to a hotel after he and Allison argued which was cheapest, and made his way north east with Allison's help through the shortcuts she'd use to maneuver from client to client in her desire for reduction in the time she spends in the musty streets and rank air.

_ Matthew, Danielle, Renée, Andrew, Aaron, Nickolaus, Nathaniel, Kevin, and Seth! Oh how an unlikely cast of characters drank and laughed our youth away… Well Matthew and Dan have been trying for a kid for quite some time. Did you know actually they had their first child a few months after you had left Neil? Unfortunately Or fortunately depending on the situation for a child being born in the dying streets of Arkham, She survived for a while. But that while was not long enough. She would succumb. To the sickest sickness that infects all of Arkham. Since then The two have been running this bar. A nice place, a lovely place I come here to visit often, but it does feel a little lonely, lot less homely. That being said: I don't know where Dan has gone off to. I'm sorry that Matt has been placed in such a predicament. Maybe she just got sick and tired of Arkham. Andrew has been institutionalized and has been since you left, but you already knew that Neil; Apparently Andrew's made some progress over the years; whether that progress is true or not isn't up to me to decide. It's up to him and the doctors he thinks he's trying to fool. You ought to go visit him before you leave. I'm sure you will, I'll give you directions from where you're staying. But sooner is better than later. According to Renée Andrew's in a poor State of Affairs: A man who struggled so hard to get so far. Should not have to go out like a candle in the Storm of a windy Breeze. Renée Renée Renée. How I love that Mindless little girl… You know, she wanted to become a doctor. Of all things, the Mind. God, Nicky filled her head with so many European fantasies: a doctor of the mind. Please. Give me a break. Either way I Don't know what she is. I don't want to say she's a lost cause. But ever since she Walked away from Jesus She's definitely… Being in… Found herself in Newer religions of older implications. I don't really know how to explain it. She doesn't really talk to anyone anymore. She spends most of her time at the chapel down by Oleanders graveyards. God knows what she's doing in there. God knows what any of them are doing in there. It's a whole damn group of them. They all worship and pray and disappear for days on end. Is it a God that they worship, is it just an excuse to engage in the depravity? Maybe you'll find out for yourself, after all Neil your mom is buried at Oleanders. I'm sure you wonder about Aaron and Nicky's whereabouts but alas in Germany Nicky remains I assume happy: good for him, to leave this cesspool - I fear he may be the only of us to have a happy ending. As for Kevin, aside from a run in at a campaign event to end the fishing drought in Arkham, I hadn't seen him since, though his face congregates the street lamps, reeking of reelection posters, moldy and torn much like his spirit. See him tomorrow Neil, he may have better insights to Renée and Andrew; he shares correspondence with the mayor of Oxnard in California so perchance he'll inform you of Jean and Jeremy. Best of luck to you Neil, may we both receive peace in the answers Arkham torments us to find. Don't be a stranger, I'll always have a room and bed for you. _

Neil still hadn't known what had become of Aaron; Andrew never spoke of his twin and he doubted Aaron even knew his brother was institutionalized. As Neil and Allison parted ways, he watched her shadow disappear into the clutches of men but could not judge her as he too was clutched by a man. A man that made him spend his nights at the Dunwich Hotel on Gilman Street.


	3. CHAPTER 3.

CHAPTER 3.

Arriving at the Dunwich, Neil sought the help of a young woman mopping, only a few years lesser in age to him, in locating his room and checking in as he stood by the empty concierge desk, glancing at the desolate lobby of ripped leather furniture and an odd stench of urine. Dumping her dirty, soap water into a dirt filled pot of a dying fern, she motioned to Neil a wave: "I'll be with ya in a moment, it's busy this time of years."

"I can see that", Neil replied pointing to the empty waiting room, "I'll be lucky if I get a room tonight eh!" The young maid laughed and introduced herself as Katelyn Vixen, internally shaking Neil's perception that all of Arkham was sickly and derived from morose disgust. Her accent indicated she wasn't from Arkham but rather from the midwest, sharing a dialect similar to Nicky's smirking imitation of his father. After checking in and grabbing the luggage, they both lumbered up to Neil's room, his acute attention to the creaking of the stairs ached his mind as he sat on a stool by the door while Katelyn arranged the bed. She looked at Neil and studied his face - the wrinkles and darkness around his eyes, mixed with a sickly appearance of youth - trying to guess his reason for coming to Arkham: "you don't look morbidly ill though, you aren't a man of many travels as most your injuries are scars and not gashing scabs of that, say a sailor or prizefighter, so I can determine you are here for business purposes." Neil nodded and asked how her demeanor can stay so uplifting. Katelyn replied that she'd only answer if Neil explained what he was doing in Arkham. Neil's curiosity turned to resilience as he did not wish to discuss his past, though after being most persistent Neil compromised that he'd regale his personal history after leaving Baltimore but never before… 

_I left Baltimore at 19, sometime around the late summer of 1900 and moved to Arkham for its low-cost housing, and quickly enrolled at the Rhode Island university the following January in the mathematics department, though admittedly I spent most of my time at the anthropology department where Andrew studied. He was a blond fellow, pale skinned, short enough that one might mistake him for a child lost on campus with his constantly darting eyes, but he was a fantastical addition of companionship to my relatively new lifestyle; we boarded together as roommates during that time as he moved out of the home he shared with his brother Aaron. Always in silk or linen armbands to differentiate from his twin, the two sparred beyond the reasonable world of academics often with theories of how the world should operate; platonic symphonies at the Eden's pub would take place where they'd debate the fanatical merits of 'colonialism for societal advancement', 'eugenicists for world peace' , or 'cloning and reanimation for population control' for hours on end. Your mayor, Kevin Day also studied at Arkham, engaging in riveting conversations on airborne electrical currents, sterilization of pestilent species, and the Confederate's slavery of the negro children as pets. The three would conjure a storm for hours fueled by nothing more than aggression and alcohol, then we'd laugh and debate and drunkenly quote scholars. The good times would not last however, as all good times in this world lead to death eventually._

_By 1908, I had received both my bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics and was set to study for my PhD, building a thesis on the quantum understanding of cellular reanimation that Dr. Herbert West had begun in Switzerland. By graduation day that year however, Andrew had already been institutionalized for his sexual behaviour and has been in the_ Easthaven _asylum ever since, putting my academic goals on hold. This happened a year after I had summered at Evermore estate: the compound of Riko Moriyama and his family of Japanese… After a year of struggling to free Andrew and free myself from Andrew's essence, I decided to leave to the Carolinian south, teaching mathematics at the Palmetto State University, and sharing a correspondence with Andrew from the asylum. Now I've returned, 15 long, arduous years later, wondering what is to become of my once long companion._

Katelyn couldn't believe all that Neil told her as she stared at a face of exhaustion, unable to imagine what his past before Arkham must've been like and if it acted as a contributor to Neil's coldly blank demeanor. She noticed the time on the wall hung clock and excused herself, wishing Neil the best and a good night as Neil knew Katelyn was stirred to a lonesome sympathy to the heavy burden Neil bore. _Maybe_ Neil thought _I'll now never know Katelyn's uplifting attitude_ , he may have extinguished it that night.

Neil slumped into his bed as the pounding in his head subsided; he hoped to get some sleep whilst having to consistently inhale the musty stench of unwashed pillows and black mold covered walls. Stripping down to nothing, tossing his clothes onto his suitcase, Neil walked over and stood in front of his window, faintly catching a glance of his scarred reflection, remembering the sliding rub he received from Andrew along his chest, chilling his spine and raising the hairs on his neck as they laid in bed and dreamed the dangerous dream of a life together. Neil wasn't afraid of consummation - Allison was wrong to suggest the intimacy he shared with Andrew was as cheap as hers with countless strange men. The poor devils she entertained to get by on her own merits is what enthralled and condemned her to never leaving Arkham: a victim of the city's rancid abuse towards individuals with no means to a happy life… or so Neil tried to convince himself of. He leaned against the window with one hand at his side, staring at the nightmarish town - its winding roads and necrotic buildings, all full of living beings with dreams, albeit not all beings were human, as not all dreams were pure - drowsed into a hypnosis, staring at the labyrinthine infrastructure, thinking of the frolicking evenings he'd spend with Andrew drunkenly scurrying like the putrid rats that dwelled under ever wine cellar. He couldn't stop thinking of Andrew, after 15 unforgiving years, was his life so stagnant - so empty without his companion - that he could not move on? Unable to shake the incessant yelling as Andrew was dragged off to the asylum, the screams pounding through his head, hard and heavy as his heartbeat, blood pumping through vessels of swollen proportions on the cusp of bursting. Was this Wymack's nightmare of the screaming islanders, holding back his cries for the safety of his crew, inevitably haunted not by the events, but by the lingering regrets that clings on one's mind? Neil could not forget holding back every scream and outcry to not draw attention of any admittance to the man he loved; anxiety raced through his body now like he once did running through Arkham in drunken desperation crying and screaming for Andrew, held down by Matt and subdued by Kevin as he mourned for the loss of a living man taken by a dead city: Neil would leave a year later. Andrew fought hard, throwing men off his back with ease for an individual with such a small stature but was overtaken and hauled through the streets as onlookers shunned the perversity. _Hypocrites_ Neil thought, _they all drank and danced and laughed and depraved their souls for lesser means but galled at Andrew for loving._ Neil hated himself for not helping Andrew immediately, for leaving Arkham to Carolina - sure it was to make money for Andrew's release into a halfway house but Neil had his doubts: _if I stayed in Carolina, I would've been forced to get over Andrew right? Right?_

Beads of sweat now dripped down Neil's eyes as the window fogged in his hyperventilated breath, and stood before the city that robbed him of everything; "I will not succumb to the depreciation that befalls residents here" he muttered as his hand slid further down his stomach towards the result of his increased blood pressure. The slightest touch by his fingers caused the nerves to shudder and tingle as he struggled to stifle his urges and struggled to recall happy thoughts with Andrew: somehow, both nothing and something came that night as Neil slumped into bed and fazed into sleep.

_Neil..._ _~~neil~~ _

_How could you? How could you do this to me? How could you leave me? How could you let me rot? Do you prefer me dead? Is that why?_

_Explain,_ _liar_ _Explain how you love me? And yet you let me rot for 15 years, 15 hundred years._

_It might as well have been fifteen hundred years._

_I counted. The times, The times that man- man alone Could count._

_There have been stories I've heard. Of beings, Beings whose knowledge of time exists beyond our own_

_Beings who cared not for love not for power not for any sort of companionship and yet were worshipped by man cared for by man preserved by man feared by man and yet They did not need it. Do you see me? Do you see me Neil? As one of those beings, those Eldritch Horrors That simply just exist. Answer me._

_A swarm of rats crawl beneath your bed. Crawl Beneath Your Feet beneath your_ ~~_soul_~~

_Eyes Ears Nose_

_They scurry and you smell them, they scurry and you hear them, you open your_ _guilty_ _eyes but you cannot see them. They are nothing more. Than your manifestations of guilt. ~~Guilt~~ _

_You have to let go of… Let go of me let go of your guilt. Let go of your fear. Your fear to live without me, your fear is what holds you back; fear is what makes you man. Fear_

_And love_ _~~love~~ me neil _

_A swarm of flies Crawl_ ~~_crawl_~~ _on your face_

_They crawl._

_Where their wings_

_I replaced._

_With legs ~~legs legs~~ covered the bodies of flies As they walked upon you. Buzzing Crawling Touching your skin because I once touched your skin. _

_And yet you swat them away. You swatted me away. You left me. You left yourself when you left me. You left yourself when you left me. You left?_

_Yourself_ ~~_yourself_~~

_You left me._

_Or did I leave you?_

_I do not know. I'm scared. I'm alone._

_Because of you_ _your fault_

_Because you Left me. When you left yourself._

Neil jolted up, drenched in sweat as he reached for the stained glass of pipe water that sat by his bedside table, too dehydrated to care for the sludge he drank and too preoccupied with the meaning of his nightmare. He checked his watch as daytime in Arkham always felt just as dark as night. It was 3:17AM which ordinarily felt late but in this instance was an utterance of confusion as the felt dilation of time seemed warped and manipulated into its own writhing conformity of uneasiness; hours felt like minutes and what seemed an eternity in the dreamscape was merely 34 minutes since Neil laid his once aching head to rest. He would not sleep for more than a collective hour the remainder of the night.


	4. CHAPTER 4.

CHAPTER 4.

Neil made his way through the streets of Arkham toward City Hall the next morning - skipping the pungent food that soggied his plate for breakfast at the hotel buffet - he passed by myriads of apothecaries and charlatans selling their Wares in the streets. Despite being far from the harbour front, the stench of fish and salty brine filled the air with a sour pungency that would induce vomiting to an unfamiliar visitor of the prolonged exposure; the putrid air filled every nook cranny and crevice. There was the sickness, the curse of Arkham that plagued even the oxygen citizens breathed. As Neil entered City Hall, he was not greeted by mayor Kevin Day's secretary, a young woman of standard Mexican heritage by the name of Thea seated at her desk, not looking up as Neil's footsteps echoed throughout the empty building. She was untrustworthy simply by appearances, Neil knew not to believe her words, her thoughts, her ideas, her beliefs. She was one of Arkham. She was as corrupt as the city was and as selfish and prudent as her kind comes. "May I help you?" She asked while stapling papers at a front desk of the large Cathedral styled building, as Gothic windows of stained glass glistened reflections of green and yellows across her desk with the skulking hues of blue highlighting her face and dark auburn hair. Neil asked: "I would like to speak with mayor Day. Please" but Thea coldly asked, not looking up from her stapling, if he had an appointment. "Tell him… Neil came to see him" he suggested, hoping Thea wouldn't recognize him. 

After Andrew had been locked away Neil found himself stark drunk, raving like a mad lunatic as he wandered through the empty hollow streets of Arkham one night, crying for his beloved. Matt, who served Neil the alcohol, not knowing the madness it would induce, tried to calm his stupor. He tried to bring Neil down, consoling him, even trying to put his hand over Josten's mouth to quiet his murmurings and ramblings of love the two men shared. Kevin, a newly appointed mayor at the time, was drinking in celebration at the bar a few weeks prior. He returned shortly after Andrew was locked away to console Neil who had left out of spite and hatred for Kevin's inability and ineffectiveness to do something about Andrew's predicament. As Neil rambled through the streets, being faintly held down by Matt, Kevin decided to assist in the situation as he felt personal responsibility for Neil's safety at such a fragile time in their lives. Kevin had run back to City Hall and instructed Thea to prepare a bed for Neil and he would spend the night in the old Gothic building to mourn and cry and anguish about the loss without alerting the citizens to his homosexual behavior. Thea, a typically secretive woman, was trusted by Kevin to not reveal any of Neil's words, though Neil could tell the following morning as he sobered up that she would remember all that he had said throughout the night she stayed at the front desk to warn Kevin should Neil ever try to escape in his drunken stupor. 

Thea stopped stapling, but still refused to look up at Neil's face as if identifying a voice to a face would send her into a pitfall of recognition and she would recoil in hostility: ultimately a fear to see Neil's eyes with her own. Thea got up from her seat and walked up the hollowed staircase behind her, turning left into a room as Neil waited for his tittering heartbeat to calm; Thea returned three minutes later down the stairs, informing Neil that Kevin will see him before lighting a cigarette at her desk, still having definitely looked him in the eyes. As Neil drudged up the stairs the empty building echoed the breeze of cracked windows as a faint ' _ Josten'  _ Neil thought he heard, coming from Thea perhaps, but did not react, instead shifting his focus to the inevitable confrontation. 

Neil stood before Kevin's office, the door already open as Neil held his breath, thinking of what to say to the once friend turned mayor. He wondered from the ajar door if Kevin could see him and if he was also wondering what to say to Neil. Quietly exhaling, he entered the sprawling room of red carpeting and grey paneled walls - trying to hold back his obvious inquisitiveness, Neil's eyes darted around the room examining as many knick knacks and intricate ornaments sitting on desks and bookshelves before turning his attention to the paintings that hung throughout the office: paintings of ungodly horrors lurking beneath the seas, fighting with sailors on their voyages to the unknown, paintings of tentacled beasts with hidden faces, veiled in flesh at altars of worship, accompanied by framed photographs of Kevin and his father Captain Wymack in ceremonial garbs sitting… next to Riko among the Moriyama clan in Japan, taken years after Neil had gone to Carolina. Before Neil's mental inquisitions could continue, on the far side of the office Kevin facing away from Neil at a table of various foreign alcohols and a bucket of cloudy ice commented: "my father always said it was good luck to hang canvases of monsters, to keep the realer dangers that could walk through my doors at bay." As Neil approached Kevin to shake his hand, Kevin turned around holding two glasses of Irish whiskey with ice, handing one to Neil in exchange for his handshake. With a devilishly seductive smile, inching a minuscule baring of his teeth, Kevin and Neil exchanged pleasantries a constituent would expect from a politician - except Kevin Day was no politician: He was a stooge for the Moriyama clan and their Opium trafficking; a front for the inhumane transformation of Arkham. Or at least, that was Neil's perception going into his reunion.

"So, How've you been Neil?" Kevin asked as he sipped his drink, smiling at Neil but with cloudy eyes obviously focused on other affairs. "Spare the pleasantries Day", Neil snapped as he placed his glass on a shelf of aged, leather-bound books. Kevin walked over to the shelf removing the glass, motioning were it to spill, the pages would be irreparably damaged - a sign that Neil took that Kevin expected this confrontation to be physical. "I'm doing quite well thanks for asking", Kevin muttered as he poured the unconsumed drink into his own half-drunk glass. Neil walked over to the window overlooking Arkham and stared at the civilians scurrying about their day like rats; "quite a city you got here - a real festering nest of parasites" Neil mockingly praised in his most political tone, "one might think it's being run by the ocean current as mayor what with how sickly and briny it is." Kevin walked over and placed his shoulder on Neil's: "Oh Josten", Kevin chuckled unamused, "you always had to be right."

"Better than always having to be wrong" Neil walked away from Kevin towards the dusty, bistre oakwood desk touching the grooved HON. MAYOR KEVIN DAY name tag. Struggling to maintain his composition, Kevin recklessly consumed most of his drink and approached Neil as he spieled: "What's with all this hostility? When the Foxhole arrived, you didn't think I knew you were coming? I welcomed you into this city, allowed you to interrupt my scheduled day, and offered nothing but gracious hospitality and you're barking at me like I dredged up every problem that plagues the streets! If you think depressed witticisms are going to work, then you better hightail it back to Raleigh or wherever you came from because  _ you _ are sorely mistaken; you'd have better luck freeing Andrew from his cage Josten hope-to-be-Minyard!"

Without so much of a breath, Neil's lunged towards Kevin and grabbed his waistcoat with such ferocity that the young mayor stumbled into his desk, knocking over ornaments and reddening his face in contempt as Neil whispered, "15 years, you had 15 years to free Andrew and you didn't. You knew nothing was wrong with him and he's still rotting in that pit. Don't you ever mention his name. Or I will murder you." Kevin pushed Neil off and sipped whatever remained of his spilled whiskey before straightening his tie: "you think I  _ want _ to keep Andrew there? You think I don't want to see you and him leave this city and never return? I could live a thousand years - I could age as old as the monstrosities painted on my wall - and I still would consider it too soon, if you ever returned. You think I don't know what's happening in Arkham… I was born and raised here. My father was born and raised here. My mother married my father here. I had an entire life dedicated to this city, to building it up as a glorious Olympus that rivaled any other town this side of the world--". Neil banged his palm against Kevin's desk in frustration: "Spare me the campaign speech Kevin, you're no mayor; you're just a washed up little boy, still scared to take a step without the permission of that crook Riko; you were when we summered at Evermore, and you still are now." Kevin's eyes watered in the revelation of truth he would admit to Neil, "And that crook stole it all from me just because of my father's foolishness to do business with the Moriyama clan. I ha--"

"Okay stop, I know that the Moriyama opium trade has been lucrative; the result of that wealth allows him to buy whatever political power and influence he wants." Neil refused to let up on Kevin, now teary eyed, fully attentive to Neil's words and facially pleading for him to stop so he could resume a facade of ignorance: "But there comes a time when you have to grow a spine; you're mayor, you could've freed Andrew anytime you wanted; released him on a whim; released him to your own custody. Anything: you could have even had him transferred to another city like Oxnard, or another Asylum - one more lackadaisical. Anything would have been better than just leaving him. To do nothing was to say that Riko had all the power and you couldn't do anything is a lie. So you just agreed with him." Neil choked back tears at the mere remembrance of Andrew's current predicament, while Kevin, wiping tears with a handkerchief replied, "Riko has men on my father ship. That's how I knew you were coming to Arkham. In all your intellectualism, do you know how many counselors it takes to pass a bill? A simple majority Neil, that's all… We have 30 city councilors I have to contend with day in and day out. Riko has 16 in his pocket, paid for so that he can ship opium throughout this city. He could decide the fate of any bill that I wish to pass from infrastructure to corruption. He could kill it on a whim. Sixteen:

Harris

O'hanlon

Bergen 

George 

Dagon

Gregor's

Chen

Tillman VI

Connors

Livinia

Pickman

Carter

West Jr

Zann

Kukuczka 

Mendelssohn

I know their names, see their faces, smile and shake their hands knowing they know that I know they're all bought out by Riko. Even the doctors at the asylum are owned for Riko's experimentation on patients - that's how far his money allows him to reach--"

"Like who?" Neil interjected

"Prost", Kevin responded, "That is the name of Andrew's doctor. That is the man on Riko's payroll at the Easthaven Asylum. He is the one who refuses to release Andrew no matter how much Andrew complies; no matter how much Andrew plays along, Proust keeps him there."

"Why" Neil demanded? "Why would he do that?" Kevin, visibly shaken from the confessions to Neil poured himself another drink and locked his office door: "Because of you, because of me, because of our relation to each other. By keeping Andrew locked up, that creates animosity between us. I cannot free him because of Riko's money and you cannot be with the man you love. And Riko uses that as leverage against me; I cannot coilate my friends and my allies - why do you think Seth was murdered? For defiance, is laughable at best and naïve at worst - The nefarious purposes he served for the Moriyama's goals will haunt me forever. I am abandoned in my own city alone in the city that raised me like a child whose mother walked away from him."

Leaning back against the desk, Neil faced Kevin in a defeated glance - the face of a man who came second in a race he was sure to win - and sighed a heavy breath, signaling to Kevin for a drink. Gulping a mouthful, Neil responded, "both our mothers are no longer here so you know what it's like to wake up expecting to see your mother, only then sobering to the fact all you can do is visit a stone with her name on it. That's how I feel about Andrew."

Kevin emphatically raised his glass to Neil and sorrowfully drank his whiskey: "Riko has turned the city into a stone; a stone that I can either sink or a stone that I can carve, and I can only carve it with the tools that Riko gives me. So it's either that or I just let this city continue to rot until it sinks into the ocean where it belongs along with all of Riko's money and opium. So here's what's going to happen: we're going to sit here, reminisce about the old, let Arkham rot, and then you'll leave. You mentioned oxnard, so let me regale you with Jean and Jeremy's life since you left--"

"I don't want to." Neil protested as Kevin walked around his desk and sat at his chair, motioning Neil to sit as well, smiling in a half drunken gauze as he replied, "You don't have a choice, like I don't with Riko. You can leave, or you can stay but that's all on your desire." Neil shuddered at Kevin's forceful rhetoric, however he dejectedly sat down and lazily pointed at the morosely despondent mayor to update him on the last time he saw Jean and Jeremy as they both drank, though he couldn't stop thinking of Andrew and Riko, so he would only take in Kevin's words after he had left city hall.

_ After you left, 3 years after Evermore, I took a trip - one might say to finally cleanse my palette of that horrid event - to Oxnard to visit the mayor on business regarding the trade of Atlantic codfishes as an excuse not to spur Riko's suspicions. While there I made it a mission to visit Jean who lived in a one bedroom apartment above a small boutique with Jeremy; a home they bragged that was only two blocks away from where the sun would set. Jean utilized his french and worked as a correspondence official and translator for the mayor's office in Oxnard with a New Orleanian senator in Louisiana who wants congressional support for a hunting expansion to include cranes or something of that sort. He was still the tall, pale, skinny kid we knew, only tanner… happier. _

_ Good for him. _

_ He whistles now which I found more annoying than his love of French food - seriously Neil, a baguette? How do you even slice it? Haha anyways, occasionally I'll still get a letter from Mr Knox's betrothed telling me about Jeremy's political aspirations being inspired by me - that's right, they're set to get married: of course once it's legal, so no, they'll both die before they're recognized as a union. But they're happy together so I can understand the perks of your people's lifestyles. In the midst of regaling me about their Christmases spent in the winter villages of the Oregon mountains, he showed me picturesque images of two becoming one through love - the subtle touch of two hands holding, each wrinkled gap being filled by the other, with intertwined fingers buried in turtleneck sweaters under festive lights of green and pink. I did not envy their love; I envied the happiness I could never provide Arkham… I had to ask how they could afford such lavish getaways. Jean tells me that Jeremy works in oil - the black gold he calls it. He didn't specify but knowing Knox, he's purposely knee-deep in sludge so Jean could wash him off in the evenings-- _

Suddenly a knock at the door, Thea peered in slowly as Kevin sat up straight from his reclined position and Neil finished his whiskey, placing it next to Kevin's empty glass of melted ice. Kevin motioned to Thea: "come in, Neil and I were reminiscing, so you're not interrupting anything important." Neil heard the tonal shift back to professional politics; a voice glazed with sleazy connery as Thea handed him a note and smiled at Neil, before taking the empty glasses and walking out of the room. Kevin glanced over the paper as a bead of sweat formed on his forehead as Neil questioned if he should leave: Kevin insisted. "You know your father is in town right? Maybe you should go see him before he leaves again", Neil suggested as he and Kevin walked down the staircase. Kevin coldly and calculatedly replied, "I don't wish to see my father. Not for any particular reason, I'm just extremely busy. I barely had enough time in my schedule to make room for you, but seeing how we go back to the days of Rhode Island University together, it makes sense to the public that I would see an old friend". Neil, puzzled by the shift in attitude wondered if Kevin, as mayor, was workshopping a justification for blowing off his duties and getting drunk instead. Without a moment to contemplate however, Neil noticed his hand was quickly being shook by Kevin before being escorted out by Thea. Kevin stood at the bottom of the staircase in silent meditation as Neil left wondering if he'd ever see the young mayor again. As Neil walked in the direction of the Black Rod, he noticed an automobile approach city hall, and paused to see who'd emerge only to be mortified as Tetsuji Moriyama - Riko's uncle and head of the American branch within the Moriyama clan's organization - step out from the vehicle.

Tetsuji was ancient, a man who could only be described as one who aged indefinitely; from the driver's seat emerged Ichirou Moriyama - Riko's older brother: the polar opposite of Tetsuji in appearances; he seemed to appear indefinitely young. Strapping and confident, he walked as a bulletproof man would walk through a crowd of loaded guns.  _ I'm right here, kill me!  _ was the perpetual state of Ichirou's gait towards the front doors. Neil remembered the summer at Evermore and spurred a desire for drunken relief as he saw the secrets the Moriyama elders carried between them written on their expressionless faces. He quickly looked away from the pair and hoped Kevin would be alright as he proceeded to the tavern, remembering his conversations.


	5. CHAPTER 5.

CHAPTER 5

Neil arrived at The Black Rod by noon, drenched in sweat as the late August sun glowed fervently upon the eastern coast, unusual for Arkham, and sat alone at a table with a bottle of aged rum habitually poured into his glass and a cigarette in his mouth, dipping the ashes into a plate with a half eaten sandwich and peanut shells, as Matt from across the room discussed Riko's influence over Arkham and Neil reflected on his history with Kevin and a summer they went to the Moriyama's Castle Evermore.

Matt bartending to the occasional stragglers that wandered in, paid no mind to them as he conversed with Neil, deeply transfixed in thought: "Kevin hadn't always been this way you know, before you returned here he used to be loud and rambunctious and happy--"

"I know I've heard." Neil replied as his eyes quickly darted around the room, seeing if anyone was eavesdropping on their conversation. Matt, whose confidence in size and strength seldom cared what others did, continued, ignoring Neil's haste interruption. "When we were kids, he snuck into the Tonic refinery and drank himself dizzy on rye at 13 years old. Haha he was as happy as one can be in Arkham, but he didn't spend most of his childhood here in Arkham, which makes his current ordeal rather downtrodden. See, as a kid, Kevin sailed the Seas with his father, mostly on his travels to Japan and meeting with the Moriyama's, and getting to know Riko from a young age, but after graduating from university, he ran straight for public office and won, so their dynamic changed."

Neil gulped his drink and rose from his seat, walking towards the barstool closest to Matt and whispered, "eventually become complicit in the trafficking of opium across Arkham." Matt's hearty laugh and repetition of Neil's words out loud signified that all the patrons knew of the Moriyama clan's sickly grip on the city. "Lets not get too hasty to judge--" Matt was interrupted by a bespectacled old man muttering incoherent slurs about the cheapness of Spanish rum as he paid his tab and hobbled out into the streets. Neil ranted as Matt stuck his finger in the old man's glass, tasting the Spanish rum to see if there was credence to the man's words: "Kevin graduated in '06, runs for mayor '07 after spending the summer at Evermore, actually _wins_ and you don't think he did it without the Moriyamas help in exchange for opium trade deals?" 

Passing the glass to Neil to taste the rum, Matt thought of Neil's words and replied wisely, "Dan used to say we don't ask good men to behave badly, that's expected. We ask bad men to behave goodly, that's surprising. Don't expect Kevin to be the holiest monk in the monastery Neil. He's done bad things perhaps but he's a good mayor - 16 years re-elected each time isn't a bad sign. Now what's all this though about Kevin going to Evermore?" Neil tasted the rum and returned to his table without a conclusion on its taste and answered: "why does it matter? It isn't like there's--"; Matt interrupted, "do you know how many people I know spent a night in Castle Evermore? Five. Tetsuji, Riko, Ichirou, you and Kevin. Your attendance makes the ordeal so interesting, when did you go, what happened to you there?" Neil pondered for a moment as Matt's attention intensified, grazing the rim of a half drunk glass with liquor… "I am uncomfortable, but… it was the same year 1907, summer; Riko invited Kevin to his summer home for a weekend, aptly named the Castle Evermore. I served as Kevin's plus-one as his deluded motivation to get a secluded young man to see the world. It was a summer I would not soon forget so though I tried to. I tried to forget everything. And failed…" Neil began to tell of what terrors befell him and Kevin that awful summer weekend.

_I promised Andrew I would come back to him at the first sign of trouble that things are not going Well. I and Kevin will return to Arkham._

_"I don't care if Kevin returns. I want you to return" Andrew whispered in his little voice. Amongst the crowd of councilors, servants, and friends, Andrew and I shook hands though I wished my lips could softly and sullenly press against Andrew's own. And the two of us would be transported, to a world in which we could Frolic in gaily happiness. Forever in a Dream Land of eternal blissfulness…_

_Two black automobiles carried Kevin and I as well as Riko and the servants to the Moriyama clan across the Arkham countryside, winding moors and undergrowths of unkempt heaths until we pulled up to Castle Evermore. Kevin and I, from the windows of the car, caught glimpses of the tallest ivy-covered spires that towered almost seemingly over the clouds. The granite walls and concrete fencing barricaded the castle from the rest of society, indicative of its agelessness comparatively to the grime of Arkham's non-euclidean architecture. Castle Evermore had belonged to a family long before the Moriyama's bought it for their own purposes; the previous New England family's history was all wiped out within weeks of Tetsuji's claim to the deed, solidifying the ruthless impositions of the ageless man that was as intimidating as the residence itself. When Tetsuji moved in, Riko and Ichiro were adamant on knowing who would retain control over Arkham's opium: while Ichiru insisted that extortion, racketeering, protection, were preferable, Riko insisted that opium was more traffic friendly and was more controllable than that sudden bursting spur of violence. Tetsuji would agree with Riko in one of the few instances the patriarch would dissent from Ichiro who clearly wished to maintain a hand in the control of both America and Japan to the benefits of the Moriyama clan._

_Kevin and I emerged in silence - as if our very lives depended on the quietnesses. Riko emerged from the front vehicle with braggadocio and confidence as a fisherman would with a gargantuan catch. Riko walked towards his aging uncle and bowed before entering the house; a greasiness to Tetsuji lingered as he walked with the despised demeanor of the world one would have if they were to have knowledge of a realm beyond their own. What he could have seen in over 90 years. Deathless Tetsuji hobbled in the frontal gardens of Castle Evermore pointing his walking stick, ushering grunts to indicate what vegetables to be picked, stared at Kevin walking ahead of me, narrowed his eyes, and analyzed my posture and silent demeanor before returning to his gardening servants. Ichirou, at the open doorways of the ghostly abode, stood calculated and cautious in everything he said, from instructing who to prepare dinner, to who was responsible for propping the guest rooms, he truly was the brains behind the operation, while Tetsuji served as the respectful face of a power and lineage stretching back before his own youthful days in Japan during the 1830s after Kango Moriyama, the original patriarch of the clan, died and Ichirou abdicated total power in Japan to his uncle for influence in America._

_Entering the foyer, the relentless stench of rust one would smell after holding copper coins, and the sour tinge of oysters, overpowered the aromas of freshly picked flowers lining the marble walls of etched carvings depicting hordes of demons chasing horseback riding Indians, I knew not even Evermore - secluded as it was - was exempt from Arkham's cursed odor._

Neil paused his story as he shook the empty rum bottle, activating a Pavlovian instinct in Matthew to grab another bottle as he urged Neil to not stop talking - Neil refused and said his story required more alcohol than enthusiasm.

_We had arrived before sundown and after being escorted to our rooms, spent a few hours in the dwindling afternoon alone before being called down for dinner - Tetsuji had the master bedroom at the end of the hall (the escorting servant called it "boardroom-esque" with nary a space for bed and wardrobe); Ichirou's room was adjacent to Tetsuji - next to Ichirou was a room always locked where apparently business meetings took place and Kevin's guest room, across from Tetsuji, oddly creaked open whilst the others remained closed. Riko's was next to Kevin's across the business room, and mine was at the opposite end of the hall by the staircase across from the bathroom next to the business room._

_I sat in between Ichirou and Riko at dinner, uncomfortable naturally of the distinction between my Irish appearance and their brazen Japanese complexion. Kevin was seated next to Riko at the end of the table and Tetsuji sat at the head of the table on the opposite end with a servant sitting across Ichirou at the old master's side. The food was delectable, clearly the best I had eaten in a while - we gorged ourselves as mannerly as possible. What was the secret Tetsuji knew so well when he instructed what ingredients to pick? Opium. I'd later find that our meals were laced with sprinklings of the horrid drug, lowering my inhibitions and leaving me dazed in a smokey air of delirium. I had been drugged as the Moriyama men wandered off to some subterranean room as Kevin and I struggled to retain consciousness._

_I awoke from a dreamless sleep in my room, suffering from throbbing headaches and the queasiness of a sobering stomach realizing it's been filled beyond capacity; I quickly checked my body for signs of injections or punctures and slices, unsure of what reasoning there would be behind such acts when I noticed a shadow in the corner of my darkened room. I opened my mouth trying to gasp as my throat scratched in pain, wondering if I was still asleep._

_"Ingesting opium will dry your throat faster than injecting it" the faceless voice sneered. It was Riko: "Do you wish to know the secrets that hide in Evermore?" He bragged in the arrogance a leopard would have as it gripped a small antelope by its neck. I pleaded powerlessly to Riko "Water" as my breathing became wheezy and Riko leaned in, holding a glass in his hand, slowly pouring the contents onto the floor as it seeped through the tiny gaps of aged hardwood. "You can get on your knees and lap it up like the dog you are Westninski, or choke on your drying throat" Riko smiled as he sipped the water villainously and continued: "Two secrets you'll learn tonight, never to be shared at risk of death: the basement of Evermore is where the opium is stored to be redistributed; and the potent source of our drug came to Arkham when Kango died. I tell you this because of what you and Kevin will see shortly… brace yourself."_

_"Y'know, I get it--" I started as Riko leaned in and kissed me, before I rapidly pushed him off. "I want you Neil", Riko whispered as he placed his glass of water against my lips to drink._

_"I'm with Andrew, one of the Minyard twins" I gulped the water and uttered, "besides, the horridness of the Moriyama's crimes are not something I want to be involved with."_

_"I get what I want" Riko braced himself against my leg and whispered._

_In my weakened state I couldn't physically reject Riko, so I decided to say whatever I had, to have Riko reject me: "...always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you’re worth a damn."_

_Riko paused his advancements in disgust as I continued my berating, "Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless issues all the time. I know it’s not entirely your fault that you are mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know you’re physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I don’t think any of us should have to put up with this… Pity only gets you so many concessions."_

_Riko's face reddened in the glow of the moonlight as he huffed and stormed out of the room. I contemplated after Evermore if my rejection was the cause of Andrew's institutionalizing as retaliation. Before I could relax, Riko returned with two servants and promptly escorted me into their basement where they'd stumble off to earlier._

Neil sat in silence as he wondered if he ought to continue his tragic tale as Matt nudged his shoulders: "what did you see in the basement?"

"I… I saw the things that jump out from the shadows of your dreams when one endures a nightmare." Neil refused to continue his story, even as Matt offered more whiskey and rum, and to cover Neil's tab, but he simply paid his tab and proceeded to leave when Renée Walker entered through the door, bumping into his chest. Neil and Renée having reunited, returned to the table Neil sat at as Renée explained she and Allison walk the same streets (Renée exclaims she does so to purify souls, as Allison does to pleasure souls; Renée preaches otherworldly pleasures and Allison indulges in the earthly ones) and there she learned Neil would be at the tavern.

Renée suggested, "Neil, come with me tomorrow to visit Andrew, and we can go to Oleanders for a ritual ceremony to ask the old ones for help. And visit your mother!" Neil was reluctant to visit Andrew with Renée, he wanted the reunion to be private, but conceded as his strange ventures throughout the city alone might not be welcomed by locals. Neil, shifting the conversation back to Matt said, "So after Evermore, Kevin won the mayoral election and Andrew was institutionalized because of the Moriyama clan's desire to deprive Kevin of allies."

Renée's ears perked as she realized the depth of the conversation she had wandered into.

"So are you going to deprive Kevin of allies?" Matt asked coldly, after Neil refused to explain Evermore's basemented secrets.

"I'll support Kevin, after he separates himself from the Moriyama clan." Neil replied, shaking the second empty bottle of rum as Matt's cold expression warmed to a smile while Renée shook her empty glass of ice giggling. "I guess the freaks with the colored hair want to get drunk" Matt chortled as Renée's blue and purple strands of streaked colour flowed effortlessly on her white haired scalp, contrasted with Neil's own orange tinge. After an afternoon of drinking and talking to Renée, Neil returned to Dunwich that evening and faded to sleep, excited to see Andrew tomorrow.

Neil awoke in a cold sweat a few hours later, fumbling out of bed and vomiting into a bucket placed in his room by Katelyn to catch water droplets as he frantically scrambled for a pen and paper to write down the horrors he dreamt that churned and soured the alcohol in his belly.

_I saw Andrew and another: another man that would curse my dreams. It was Andrew, and Riko together mounted, and intertwined in a mound of accursed writhing And Tentacled horrors._

_As the two men congealed into one ungodly being, Andrews face Melded with Riko's And two mouths forcefully torn and_

_Stitched into one as their eyes bloodily split into four gruesome, sickly yellow pupils that cried tears of puss. Their appendages were lost in the tentacled masses. And bodily flesh melted into slime and moved as a pile Of unrecognizable horrors towards me…_

_Then the perverse Existence appeared._

_The pervertedness of the hand approached me._

_The wrinkled skin Dirty fingernails And blackness of a deathly rot And the disgust of the flesh, impured by The Accursed Consummation Of Bestial natures And the carnal Amoral Will Of Gods Beyond the power Of those recognized by man stretched out in agony._

_The ashy Scarred gray hands Of black flesh, dried bony Knuckles reached out towards me as I backed away. Unsure Of how I would feel Whether it be regretful pleasure, unwilling submission or horrid disgust I did not wish to know the horror i would feel if That feeling would beset me Should I allow my soul - were man to have a soul - Be touched by such disgusts._

_As I looked away from the writhing mass and the gray shadowed hand stretching out from the empty darkness of a void I did not desire to be Acquainted with_

_I looked up and saw nothing. But the fiery glow of an orange night sky piercing through the billowing smoke. And laid waste to Arkham as I felt the canopy of trees burning to the ground. And yet among the terror there was peace within me; a sullen calmness sudden and content. As the world burnt. I knew it would burn the monstrosity that Andrew and Riko had coiled into And the amassed. Grossness that they had become. Would disappear_

_And all that was left. Was the salty sting of pungent sourness as I inhaled The smoke of a decrepit and destroyed Arkham and in the ashes of all that was gone. I stood alone Facing the Shadow with the emerging Black fleshed hand and covered in Grey ash - The ashiness worn by the decrepit skeletal nature of whatever being it belonged to in those Shadows - for what felt like forever._

It was 2:35AM; sunrise wouldn't be until 5:43AM as Neil shivered in the crisp draft the decrepitude of the old hotel created as he hurled into the bucket the remainder of the night, crinkling the pages in his hand trying to make sense of his dream.


	6. CHAPTER 6.

CHAPTER 6.

Neil left his room the following morning, skipping breakfast as the sour acid in his stomach churned, still reeling from the alcohol he hadn't thrown up. His nose still smelled the putrid stench of vomit and he tasted the bitterness on his tongue as he sipped a glass of water and made his way towards the asylum, arranging to meet Renée along the way of the main road, and indeed he did as she was waiting for him by a stall that sold medicine - with bottles labeled "SLEEP" "HUNGER" "BOWELS" indicating what they were meant to help with. Renée had a glossy look to her eyes, a dagger strapped under her wrist faintly glistened in the sunlight as she extended her silky veiled arm and shook Neil's hand, while her other arm held a small bag. 

"For Andrew", she said, "I always bring him medicine for his hunger."

"He never told me he stopped eating" Neil pondered why this was kept from him as Renée didn't reply, instead asking Neil what he and Matt were talking about yesterday.

"What the Moriyama's did to Arkham, you can see it in Andrew's face. I can trust Matt, but he runs a bar and who knows what spies of Riko are in there. I can trust you, you were my correspondence for 15 years and not once did the Moriyama's influence you; god knows if they're responsible for Dan", Neil blurted, unsure of whether he made a mistake in confessing so much to her so quickly; he just needed to get it off his chest. Renée nodded understandingly as she inquired: "So what happened in the basement you didn't wanna tell Matt about?"

Neil and Renée sat on a bench at the base of a steep hilly incline below the comically placed Easthaven Asylum - The winding roads leading up the hill made Neil wonder if he should've eaten breakfast as he turned and saw an infinity of patience in Renée as she sat smiling at Neil, waiting for him to finish his thoughts and to tell her what happened.

_ The servants took me from my room, walking me downstairs in the blackness of night - As if they could see in the dark and I couldn't, I stumbled occasionally until I saw a faint glowing flicker choking in the darkness: a single candle lit by the doorway leading to the basement. The servant pointed, saying "go to it alone" in that raspy opium induced voice I had when confronting Riko; as much as I wanted to run out the building into an automobile and return to Andrew, nevertheless I proceeded towards the beacon of the subterranean chamber. Descending the staircase into an infinity of darkness, I reluctantly placed my palm against the limestone of the cavernous descending walls, moist with a black tarring stickiness reminiscent of a mossy stone. My mind raced with the potential of what I was going to witness in the basement of the Moriyama's compound as the silent echoes of my footsteps clacked unendingly before I reached the bottom and saw a door. _

_ As I went to open it, my attention was caught on the black fluids oozing down the door - the same one lining the walls coming down - I examined it in my palm as best as I could in the blackness, testing its viscosity between my fingers, it was slimy though I wiped the sludge off as best I could before pushing the door open. A large room was before me with unidentifiable bodies chained to the walls, scrawny and decrepit individuals covered in sores and boils, the unrecognizable ones' shackled swaying composed a horrific orchestra against the caramel stained walls of leaking dried blood that was the basement of Castle Evermore. My mind raced at the potential identities of all I saw and what level of consensuality was given to be strung up. Were they drugged, kidnapped, murdered and posthumously hung? Were I to find Seth and Dan among the hanging victims if I stared long enough at the scarred clothless bodies; I could not accept that truth so I kept my head straight and moved towards the end of the room to a curtained entryway with rhythmic audible chanting on the other end. _

_ I stepped through the embroidered black cloth to the humming glow of an electrical powered room of blinding orange luminescence radiating from glass bulbs, lighting a chamber of statuesque carvings depicting prehistoric horrors conceived only in the minds of mad ones like Riko. Tentacled winged beasts stood on pedestals, protruding globules and scaled skin etched into the blueish-green marble stone, coldly eyeing all that walked past as I caught the undying gaze of Tetsuji Moriyama in the center of the room - kneeled shirtless and unveiling horrors to me unimaginable: he was covered rows of stitches that lined his chest as he smoked opium and fell into a painless daze. Kevin was then instructed to prove his loyalty to the Moriyama's and to trust the plan- given a knife by Riko, he sliced Tetsuji's chest open as the old man profusely bled black tarring slime onto the ground below - similar to the descending wall's fluids. The servants in the room quickly got to work - An intravenous needle was placed into Tetsuji's arm with the other end attached to Ichirou, seated in a chair next to Tetsuji under the shadow of a statued tentacled monster, almost humanoid, as blood from Ichirou was transferred into the deathless Tetsuji's veins. I had only known of this once before, back in university, there had been rumours in writings that Dr. Herbert West used parabiosis (the transference of fresh blood into an older body to rejuvenate it) on mice to test the lengths of reversing senescence and death. _

_ "The blood of youth", Riko exclaimed, "revives the old" as he walked over to me and gripped my shoulder as we stared at Kevin's entranced expression melt away into exhaustion while servants stitched up Tetsuji's shredded chest. "Do you now see the power of the Moriyama's? Old man Tetsuji had suffered a fatal heart attack and was using the enchained bodies you saw to keep him alive…" Riko paused as he pointed over to his brother: "that was until Ichirou was discovered to be a perfectly infinite match, offering to keep master alive past his 86th year." In the corner of the room, Kevin druggily walked over to the full supply of barrels of opium that sat under a statue of an ungodly figure no Japanese would worship in their pantheon of spirits and grabbed a manuscript before handing it to me without saying a word then meekly being escorted out by the servants. _

_ "Read it Westninski", Ichirou hazily muttered from across the room as his pale face stared at Riko with bitter coldness before escorting Tetsuji out. _

Renée clasped Neil's hand in comfort, interjecting his story with concern: "Neil, you're trembling…"

"I'm sorry, I got myself lost reliving the nightmare--" Neil stammered as he subtly pulled his hand away from Renée, playing to his nature of refusing anyone but Andrew to get close in his vulnerability. "If it's too discomforting we can stop", Renée continued, "perhaps now we could go see Andrew." He thought about it and vocally dreaded the potential terrors that awaited him in Easthaven, confirming that he'd rather delay the inevitable and finish his tale, noting he'd it's better to get it off his chest now than when Andrew's around. "The weather's surprisingly reasonable today, so we can sit out here a little while longer", Renée enthusiastically uttered as Neil paused to feel the breeze that goes through a house on the first day of spring, opening all the windows for the first time after winter.  _ Strange,  _ Neil thought, remembering Wymack's words  _ there's always a calm before the storm _ before continuing…

_ In a language unidentifiable, I gathered context clues from notes and edits of the opium's source and power. The clan worshipped this humanoid grotesqueness for generations, before Kango sacrificed himself to appease the once angered deity when the Moriyama's announced they were going to America. _

_ I remember those words: "Tell me Neil, do you feel powerful?" Riko lightened his grip on my shoulders while staring at me with intensively cold eyes "knowing that we have access to power unimaginable." The servants returned to the room with women and men of varying ages - as youthful as prepubescent teens, to individuals that rivaled Neil in age - all drugged and familiarly noticeable to me. They were from opium dens throughout Arkham, desperate for drugs and willing to engage in depravities untold for it; orphaned children that stripped their clothes obligatorily alongside women and men of scraggly appearances, Riko in his usual banter boasted: "We'll need new bodies to feed Tetsuji while Ichirou recuperates his selfless blood loss, and as you smell the putridity of rot seeping from the hanging bodies, replacements are necessary. This however" as Riko placed his hand on a child no less than twelve "is for my own personal enjoyments. You can leave, or you can stay but that's all on your desire." _

_ What stood before me in the basement of Castle Evermore - the secret chapel: sinister sacrifices and delirious orgies galore - was home to ancient foreign monstrosities I struggled to stay sane whilst witnessessing. I could not stop Riko's degenerate indulgences as hoards of men and women and boys and girls swarmed his body in quid pro quo actions and so I hustled out of the room as my ears hummed incessantly with the following buzz of the electrical bulb currents and back to my room to pack. Kevin sat alone with Tetsuji in the dining hall from earlier, staring at the smoldering ashes of a dying ember in the fireplace… I was convinced he knows more than he's letting on so I didn't stop to talk as he peered over to me and I proceeded up the spiraled incline to my room.  _

_ I can't explain why but I thought of the 'yee naaldlooshii' of Navajo lore - the beast of all fours that wear the skin of man - that night as I barricaded my door with the dresser, like a child hoping to prevent hordes of plaguing demons in mythology from entering would. They're not real, but why do we fear them? If they exist in our minds, do they remain real in our fears? The unknown possibilities that we should be the unfortunate souls that would be the ones to encounter such monstrosities in this world of unknown horrors? That is not a wager I will never willingly make. Though the night passed relatively calmly, aside from the clattering of what I can only guess were Tetsuji's former blood victims being disposed outside the compound, as dawn broke I decided to leave with a servant going to Arkham for ingredients; standing amongst the misty dew of the midnight sun, I urged Kevin to return with me - he refused simply, saying "There's work still to be done." _

Neil got up from the bench and stretched his legs as Renée sat in meditative contemplation, thinking of what to respond with - Neil, noticing her unease and wordlessness changed the topic, suggesting the past cannot be changed but Andrew's present and future can be. The two agreed and began to make their way up the path to Easthaven Asylum, neither secretly wishing to ever bring up the topic of Evermore ever again… 

Greeting them at the front desk of the Easthaven mental Asylum was a bespectacled nurse, Abigail "Abby" Marie Winfield - lean in appearance but commanding in tone as she shook Neil's hand and waved at Renée in familiarity. "Andrew right?" She questioned as she rummaged through piles of scattered papers indicating medical records, notes to selves, progress reports, and doodles of various birds. Neil felt his chest race as he knew he was mere minutes away from seeing his lover - after 15 self destructive years, he would hold his favorite part of life in his arms again. Beads of sweat were smudged from his forehead by his handkerchief as Renée checked the two of them in as Neil couldn't help but ask, "how's he been doing?" He regretted exposing his interest before the words left his lips.

"Oh he's got his good days, when he's not hiding chips of stone in his sleeves to lunge and pierce any of the orderlies with", Abby reached under a stack of red-stained pages and pulled out a matchbox, "eureka" as she lit a cigarette, offering them to the pair as Neil accepted and inhaled the noxious smoke, remembering the stench of Andrew's fingers as they'd trace the outline of his lips. Smothering his face into the collar of Andrew's shirt and shuddering at the scent that soaked the fabric. "It's like you're burning to death" Abby commented, "you're pale as a corpse, got a fire in your mouth, and hair that would agitate a blind bull."

"Thanks", Neil muttered, "I grew it myself" as he ruffled his hair, smiling that deviant political smile he learned from Kevin.

"Ready?" Renée asked as Neil put out his cigarette against the glass surrounding Abby's desk and sniffed his ashen fingers.

"First I gots to check your bags, make sure no contraband is entering the premises - protocol and whatnot", Abby said as she took Renée's bag to a small room for inspection before swiftly returning and handing it to her: "off we go!"

"So we've got your psychos, your invalids, your criminals, and your allboves" Abby pointed as she escorted Neil and Renée through the corridors of urine soaked walls and mold filled ceiling's; as one of the few places in Arkham with access to the electrical system, Easthaven glistened with the whiteness of artificial light, illuminating the disgusting fortress the patients were subjected to living in.

"What's an allbove?" Neil asked.

"All of the Above" Renée said in response as Abby winked, "psychotic criminals with no hope for the future."

"Is that where Andrew is?" Neil persisted.

"I'm sorry love", Abby replied, "we can't tell you who's what, but there's an easy way to figure it out… ask them if they belong here. If they say 'no', they're criminals, if they say 'where am i' they're invalids, and if they say nothing, they're psychotic."

"What did Andrew say?" Abby stopped in her tracks and turned around facing Neil in contemplation as the trio stood under the flickering glow of the light. "Why don't you ask him yourself?" She smiled as her keys jangled and she opened the door to a cell they were adjacent to. Neil held his breath as he peered in, unsure of what horrifying utterances he'd emit once his eyes were laid on Andrew's. 


	7. CHAPTER 7.

CHAPTER 7

Abby motioned Neil to enter as he began stepping into the doorway: he saw a homely room with a table, a bed, and a toilet in the corner; there were books stacked beside it, as he saw standing against the back wall, smoking a cigarette clearly not allowed to be possessed by patients, Andrew Joseph Minyard. Smoothly combed white hair, with tints of blond glowing through the light of the asylum's barred window illuminated the androgynous gender-fluid man - the feminine shape of his cheeks contrasted with the bandaged knuckles and scarred face of a soul who refused to glance at Neil.

"Hello Andrew", Renée calmly uttered, "look who's here for you."

Andrew inhaled his cigarette, the crackling of burning ash was all to be heard in the silence as Neil hesitated to approach his lover.

"Orpheus, a pathetic musician, was desperate to see his Eurydice… he was told not to turn around as he escorted her out of the underworld lest she vanished into oblivion… He deserved to see her dissipate in his foolishness… hello Abram." Andrew spoke into his cigarette as he faced the floor at Neil's feet. Abby returned to the front desk, closing the door as Renée and Neil were locked in with Andrew who was in possession of contraband cigarettes and more items that have not been uncovered. Neil took a singular step as Andrew huffed, causing him to pause in his tracks. "Twenty years," Neil replied to Andrew, "It took Odysseus 20 years before he could return to Ithaca. And see his beloved Penelope. But she waited for him, she waited and waited and waited; hoping, praying… Knowing that her love would return to her by the grace of all that was good in this world."

"I am not your Penelope", Andrew barked, staring at Neil who became shaken by the faded blue eyes that glazed across Andrew's still youthful face Neil whispered in a low breath, "I don't know what to say, is it meaningless to apologize?" "Never", Renée interjected.

"I'm sorry Andrew--"

"What am I supposed to do with that? Wipe away the last 15 years, 8 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 10 hours, and 16 seconds of my life… 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23" Andrew kept counting indefinitely.

"I don't know what else to say, I'm ashamed, I'm alone, I miss you, I hate myself for being away for so long, I'm angry at all the promises that I let break. I'm frustrated that you've haunted me when I tried to forget you, I regret even trying to… I want you to forgive me but I don't deserve it. Say something and stop counting, I kept counting all these years, I thought you'd be excited… all these letters, I came because I was worried I wanted to help you", Neil reached into his coat pocket and scattered them on the table… Renée was visibly shaken as Andrew examined the pages.

"I didn't write these…" he muttered to Neil glancing at the love letters and intimate confessions, reading the most recently dated letter.

_ Dear Neil, saints and harlots plagued the dank streets like rats with bulbous puss seeping from their fur: disgusting already by nature, but more so by the addition of the damp, sour atmosphere of permanent rot that plagued Arkham. I no longer eat, as I fear the food is tainted by doctors to subdue patients with hallucinogenic dreams  _ ~~_ though I'm assured it is not the case. _ ~~ _ "Is there a god? Perhaps not, for something far worse than the devil scares god from entering Arkham." That, my dear Josten, has been the mad ramblings of the Arab celled next to me, chanting his prayers for a god far from this continent to save him. I don't wish to talk to such a person, depressing yet full of hope. There is no hope, only certainty: certainty of death, and certainty of pain. I adored you most of all, but I will no longer partake in the realm of earthly judgement. Yours in madness, unfortunately, Andrew Minyard. _

"Renée", Andrew lowly uttered as he crumpled the page, "get out." Neil couldn't bear to face Renée as she got up and left the room in quiet sobs, before collapsing into a chair and being tossed a packet of cigarettes and a lighter by Andrew.

"So she was writing me all these letters?" Neil queried as he struggled to ignite the lighter

Andrew knelt next to him and snapped his finger mid flick as the lighter emitted a dancing flame,"Naïve" he said in staring at his fingers as they coiled Neil's own wrapped around the lighter.

"She was only trying to help me understand your situation" Neil responded.

"No, you're naïve for assuming I'd write to you"

"I wrote to you for 15 years and you didn't even know… "

"You missed me. I didn't. You're weak, so Renée" Andrew said as he tossed the pages sitting across from Neil, "she did what was best for you. If it's therapeutic, keep writing them but don't expect me to ever reply."

"So were Renée's letters all lies?" Neil played with the lighters cap in his hand as Andrew stared deeply into his orange hair, examining the bangs, sideburns, and slight recede that came with unnatural stress.

"I don't lie", Andrew broke his silence and answered Neil: "She visits, we talk, she leaves, she writes to you. I guess I was wrong…"

Neil was puzzled as Andrew reached into his pocket and pulled a black, leather clad case from his coat, unveiling a pair of spectacles he wore to closely examine the specificity of Neil's changing appearance: "You were Orpheus and all you thought of me faded to obscurity."

Neil understood it all now, figuring it was hard to forgive Renée, but now knows why it was so easy to explain the events of Evermore to her as if he confessed it to Andrew.

Neil, snapped out of his thoughts and noted, "if I ever get my hands on Riko for putting you in here I'd--"

Walking over to the door, Andrew shushed Neil as he picked up Renée's bag with the hunger concoction and drank it in its entirety.

"They drug you here. With opium", Andrew whispered in between gulps of the concoction.

"What? How do you know?"

"It's a subtle experimentation… to test the limits of overdosing. It's sprinkled in the food that's why I get Renée to bring me this medicine, substitution for the meals."

"How do you know though?" Neil persisted to Andrew's subtle annoyance. He removed his shirt; a slightly haired body that was scraggly thin, Andrew had been starving himself for weeks if not months, only eating the drugged food in desperation, pointing to his eyes faded blue as proof of the drug inducement.

"After having hallucinations that lasted the weekend, the doctors suggested they were just erratic dreams or a reaction to my medication, and that I couldn't distinguish reality due to my mentally ill mind that breeds more illness. After a while I was forced to eat 'cracker dust' since I won't consume actual food. But--" Andrew's conspiratorial eyes bulged as he scanned the room, "I know it's just granulated opium flavored."

Neil heard silent mutters from beyond the door as he turned his head to see Andrew had already pressed his ear against it - Renée was outside, whispering a silent prayer over Andrew in a language insurmountable to any native English speaker; alien in nature it was unlike anything Neil had heard

_ Ninzuif xudi Kavaah'mish boefexx Andrew Minyard xibufs boe jo lenn Amesham modruths Minyard corruwen _

In which later anthropological translations of the cult's ceremonial language would mean

_ Kavaah'mish lord of the mindless: guide Andrew Minyard towards a pleasure the great Old Ones do not know; grant peace to the lovers of Minyard forever. _

As Renée's footsteps could be heard retreating, Andrew returned to his chair, igniting another cigarette and lowering his glasses _ , " _ let's talk", he said in his most sarcastic, armchair psychologist voice. Neil contemplated what to ask Andrew before deciding to discuss the other Minyard, his twin brother Aaron. Andrew huffed, "You're really making it difficult for me not to hurt you Neil… but given that the last fifteen years of information you received weren't from me, I guess you are owed some kind of truth from myself directly."

Andrew sighed and shook his head in utter contempt at the situation Renée had placed him in. Though she meant well, Andrew understood that well-meaning actions were nothing more than frivolous dreams an individual indulges in to feel better about their own terrible lot in life. Andrew for one had no time nor inclinations for optimism and to dream that hope was alive: all light faded from his life. He simply sat in his room waiting for death, and the emptiness an existential loneliness brought. That is what Neil had walked into. Euyridice had faded into obscurity long before Orpheus turned around.

_ After you left,  _ Andrew muttered as Neil leaned in attentively _ Kevin came to visit and he said that as mayor he would do everything in his power to get me out. I guess he was pretty powerless. I got frequent visits at first from Matt and Dan: they would come and bring food, drinks, and truly it felt normal… just as if I was a cripple confined to the spaces of his house. Wheelchair-bound and unable to traverse Stairs. For a while It was good. It felt like I was King to be served hand and foot. But it wasn't until They started drugging me. That was when things changed. _

_ I Found myself awake one day. I had breakfast and I devoured everything. And I sat in the rooms And I wondered When was the Sun going to set. But the sun didn't set; the light got brighter and brighter and brighter and the room started heating up. It was a flame. Flickering from the walls and the pages of the books, I did my best to avoid being burned. You should have seen me Neil. I was an absolute mess. Eventually the flame spread too far and I was consumed in this fire as the room just heated up more and more burning and burning the bright lights from the window just piercing through and lighting everything on fire. I was engulfed in Flames for hours and hours. I screamed and burned, groaned in Agony, My Flesh melted and the burning of Rotting Flesh. Putrid meat pierced my nose. And I burned For days and days and days… _

_ And then I was told it was just a bad dream; a reaction to medication. Maybe it was Kevin or Matt or Dan who said something but Aaron came to visit. I Don't know how, I don't know why. I don't care. But he came to see me. I told him he was wasting his time. I told him it was no point. I told him I didn't want to speak to him. And he simply said your color in your eyes is fading.  _

_ That's when I knew.  _

_ Something was wrong.  _

_ Aaron majored In biological chemistry: He was studying at Miskatonic University. I think you wanted to do your PhD there with Herbert West; It's not too far from Arkham… I'm sorry, you never got to go through with it Neil. Anyways, anyways, anyways Aaron explained that there are physical reactions to a chemical imbalance of the mind that the body has to endure when under the influence of hallucinogenic chemicals and drugs. For some people the physical reactions can be as Benign as dry lips, cottonmouth, and the simple staggering forgetfulness. For others it's as serious as nausea. Permanent brain damage. Inflammation of the lungs and Tightening of the trachea. But in the case of this opium It seemed the chemical reaction was the faded color of one's eyes. _

_ Aaron told me for the sake of his Pursuit into the world of biological chemistry, He introduced himself to drugs And ruined his body Beyond what he called 'internal repair'. He condemned my eyes and accused me of Smuggling drugs into the Asylum to cope with my institutionalization. He expressed disgust and shame. He didn't Express sympathy or sorrow or even love and compassion. It was all just a cold, calculated response. _

_ Last I heard from Renee or Allison or Matt or Dan or Kevin or God. Maybe Nicky came and visited and told me but my brain is shot to hell. I couldn't remember what I ate for dinner last night. If I ate anything at all or simply starved myself into unconsciousness, but last I heard Aaron was Somewhere in Canada or somewhere in Florida? I don't know if he liked the cold air or the Heat. Or maybe he was preferable to the moderately warm temperate climates; for all I know he could be in Oregon right now… _

Neil knew something was wrong in the changing inflection of Andrew's voice. Lost for words and befuddled, Neil checked the bottle of Hunger concoction Renée brought - it reeked of the headache inducing opium… Andrew had consumed an overdose amount of granulated drugs in the liquid. It was too late for Andrew as Neil saw the progressive dulling of his lover's once blue eyes, fading to a hue of grey, the white stone of his castle that protected him, now dimming, and though Neil didn't say anything, Andrew saw it on his face that something had gone horribly, irreversibly wrong as he raised his hand staggeringly and told Neil "do you want to remember me as I am now? Or as I was then?" as he insisted they carry on their conversation in complete normality.

_ Was it Renée, did she poison Andrew? Or Abby? Or was the salesman one of Riko's henchmen? _ These thoughts raced through Neil's head as he felt the disconnect between his words to Andrew and thoughts in his head.

"The only one I’m interested in is you" Neil caught himself saying as Andrew struggled to maintain a calm expression while subtly gripping his obviously poisoned stomach.

"don’t say stupid things", Andrew grunted, beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he attempted to control the conversation away from his steadily declining health.

"Tell me Neil, why you thought of me all these years… what would've happened should you get me out of here?"

"Maybe tomorrow we'd settle down; a small bodega in a little town, maybe Innsmouth - I'd run the store, and you would fish by the seas; I hear Atlantic Codfishes are big this year. And when it got too cold or rainy, we'd travel to California and coast down the highway together, what do you want Andrew?" Neil could hear the faint cracking of his voice as Andrew's drug induction started taking over and he slumped into his chair: "I want nothing Abrams" he hissed in pain.

"In this city I am nothing, and you said you want nothing"

Andrew dragged himself by his forearms across the table to Neil, wincing slightly as his stomach grazed the edge wood as he proceeded to kiss Neil but once on his blushing red lips.

"I hear a storm is comin' in" Andrew whispered, the blue in his eyes completely gone as he slunk back in his chair. "My dear, all we've ever been is a storm" Neil replied, feeling the warmth of the sun for a thousand years in his heart as he stared at the initiative Andrew took - he knew he wouldn't get another chance.

"I hate you 98%" Andrew wiped his sweat, pointing Neil to the door, "get out. You and Renée ruined me." 

Neil asked if he should get a doctor as Andrew laughed deviously: "they'll just speed up the process--"

"If I leave you now, you may hate me 100%"

Andrew quietly whimpered under his breath "99%"

Neil holding back tears to Andrew's drug-numbed face walked out of the room, knowing Andrew would collapse from an overdose in the coming days. Enough time to pack and charter a boat back to Carolina.

"Neil" Andrew muttered as he reached into his coat pocket "don't ever say I never wrote you." Andrew slipped him a letter, dated after his hallucinogenic weekend when he posited doctors were drugging him, a last gasp before the diving slip into madness, scribbled in maniac desperation as one tends to do when they're last moments of sobriety and sanity dwindle at the approach of deafening madness. Neil read it as he left the room, looking back to see Andrew slump in his chair and smoke. Fifteen years, gone, never to return.

~~_ Dear Neil _ ~~ _~~,~~ Josten, this is your life. These are your moments. Seize it with everything you’ve got. Pull out all the stops and lay it all on the line. Fight because you don’t know how to die quietly. Win because you don’t know how to lose. You may have lost me forever, but you cannot live your life regretting. You must no longer be an addict to me as you once were junkie - live Josten. Don't just survive. Live you bastard. I will not be responsible for ruining two lives. Forevermore, Andrew Joseph Minyard-Josten. _

Neil promised to write one last letter to Andrew as he stood in the quiet halfway of locked doors, heaving his breath under the buzz of lights, asking a nearby nurse - Livinia, dressed in purple clothing with red embroidery - to meet with Andrew's doctor Proust. He explained he wished to discuss Andrew's institutionalization, and was promptly escorted to his office by an orderly. Whilst waiting in the doctor's uninspired office, to take his mind off of Andrew's inevitable collapse and the alarming scuffle of employee's feet pattering down the halls to his cell, Neil distracted himself as he went through Proust's files and found a letter from whom he could only assume was Riko. Dated March 14th, 1923.

_ A potential suggestion is the distribution of granulated opium mixed in the food of inmates, tout to media as  _ ~~_ forcing their addiction _ ~~ _ an opportunity to increase their chances of obedience citizenry _

_ This could be a most profitable outcome for you Proust _

_Shall they be released to the streets, it will create a controlled clientele for "M"._ _You should expect yourself to be compensated for your services._

_ Consider this. _

"Who are you?" A scratchy voice pierced Neil's ears as he was lost in the note reading, dropping the page onto the desk as he turned around to see a name tag reading "Dr. Proust" hanging from the lapel of a black suit jacket - the first name vigorously scraped out - tightly fitted around the broad upper chest of a well groomed young man; slick and oily, his unwashed hair sat upon the head of a man with similar energy as Neil introduced himself as a comrade to one Andrew Minyard: his gulping throat choked as he sullenly uttered his deceasing lover's name. 

"What do you want with me?" Proust demanded whilst walking to his desk, sliding the pages of notes and confidentiality records towards him away from Neil, who snapped back in furor, "Is Andrew's life worth less than Moriyama's money?"

"You don't get it" a malicious grin grew on the doctor's face as he hissed out his response, "I want more than the money, I want the flesh of the young man, pressed against mine - to hold him until I have my satisfaction--" Neil approached Proust with the intent to kill, "-- ah I wouldn't. You have no power here; think of my office as an extension to your potential cell: what you do in here, reflects what happens in there."

Neil paused momentarily to weigh the contents of his own institutionalizing and thought of Andrew's - how he wouldn't have hesitated to scatter the pages in a cluster of startles and leap across the table, slicing Proust with his bare fingernails until they broke - and he smiled, understanding Andrew would soon find peace from his torture in death: "I wanted to see the face of the monster who took everything from me, but all I see is a man who'll always have nothing."

"I am a well respected doctor and will be treated as such--"

"You're a jailer with a degree. To be locked away locked away forever will never cure this city of its problems, but simply conglomerate them into a cesspool that eventually Rises to the surface bubbling. In the form of a monster you are not prepared to deal with as mayor no city council meeting can prevent the problems that you are avoiding."

Proust, visibly tempered, shook as he neurotically gazed at Neil's defiant assessment: "Neil Justin, your pretentiousness, you arrogant ignorant child. You are a child - a child who didn't know any better, you assumed the world was black and white and easily run. Your misguided sickness comes from your relationship with that lunatic Minyard. Leave the politics to the adults. Whatever happens in this asylum to these people I will be responsible for. You really think you know the pain of Arkham. You don't know anything. I Know What Lies Beneath the streets of Arkham. I saw you and that bitch Walker enter. I know what curses have been placed upon the people. I have seen firsthand the horrors; the horrors that Hecate Renee Walker conjures in the late nights when most are asleep. She prays to an entity. Unlike God unlike Satan She prays to An Almighty Divine being which does not care, who does not acknowledge the suffering it brings. That is what you do not know, Neil Justin. You do not know! Because you were never here for Andrew, you were never here for Arkham!"

Neil had cracked, to hold back tears was a pressure he couldn't contain, simply turned in silence and walked out of Proust's office, dissatisfied at the ugliness he had endured so far in his day. "We're all pawns to the Moriyama schemes, some of us just found pleasure in it", Proust shouts into the hall as Neil walks to the front desk towards Abby. When asked about Renée's whereabouts, she replied that Renée always went to Oleanders to pray for who'd she see here. Neil thanked Abby, bummed another cigarette and left the cool air of the asylum into the mid-afternoon sun of Arkham's rare sunny day.

_ The worst days  _ Neil thought  _ still always had the best weather.  _ Neil made internal plans to write his final letter to Andrew after he went to confront Renée at the resting place of Mary Hartford, aged 30, mother of Nathaniel "Neil" Abram Wesninski Josten.


	8. CHAPTER 8.

CHAPTER 8

Outside the asylum, Neil clasped his knees and heaved as tears streamed from his face and he coughed, choking on sobs as the helplessness he felt grew. Composing himself, he confirmed that verifying Renée didn't intentionally poison Andrew would comfort his loss and once he'd return to the hotel, write his final letter to Andrew.

Unsure of which direction to take, he hesitantly asked a nearby merchant selling cookware if he could be pointed to Oleanders graveyard. The merchant explained that Oleanders is a bit of a walk from where he is, but should he have the time he could definitely get there taking the main path, though most wanderers to Oleanders were streetwalkers, prostituting creatures of the nu night, looking to for a secluded area to engage in business. Neil knew that Renée walked the same streets and alleys as Allison so she must have already made her way to Oleanders since departing from Andrew's room. Neil couldn't risk taking those back roads understanding the villainy of characters that inhabit those streets. So he decided to walk along the main road towards Oleanders though it would take him 45 minutes as opposed to Renee cutting through the alleys and corners a mere 25.

Arriving at the graveyard in the late afternoon hours, the orange hue of the inevitable descending sun burned into willowing branches a spectacle of color as they swayed in the gentle breeze above the weed covered gravestones. Walking along the cobblestone trail, Neil peered at the various headstones, reading the inscriptions and epitaphs written:

RANDOLPH CARTER (1889-1921)

SON, FRIEND, HUSBAND, AUTHOR.

"Blessed be the man that spares these stones,

And cursed be he that moves my bones."

SATCHEL OMPHALOS (1875-1896)

SON, CREWMATE, SAILOR, FRIEND.

"Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas; rest is why we slave so hard."

MAJOR SIR ERIC MORELAND CLAPHAM-LEE (1870-1917)

FATHER, SON, BROTHER, COUSIN, UNCLE, HUSBAND, SOLDIER, PATRIOT.

"Heroes have the whole earth for their tomb."

WAYDE MIAVIA WYMACK (1810-1895)

IMMIGRANT, FATHER, SON, HUSBAND, CITIZEN.

"To save your world you asked this man to die:

Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?"

CHESTER OAKLEY (1839-1921)

GRANDFATHER, HUSBAND, SON, FATHER, UNCLE, BOOTLEGGER.

"Friends heed the wise man call:

When you thirst, drink strong or drink nothing at all."

Neil perused the grave he believed to be Captain Wymack's father - mayor Day's paternal grandfather - and wondered what life he lived to earn such an epitaph.

"He was the first immigrant to become fire chief in Arkham; he famously spent 3 days extinguishing an out-of-control fire that rampaged through the port. Had it succeeded, the fishing industry that built Arkham would've collapsed."

Neil turned to see the recognizable voice that informed him and saw it was Renée, dressed in a loose fitted gown of ceremonial stature, her colored hair intensively darkened and tied in a tail, as she slowly approached him and sat on a decaying log trunk, uttering Neil to sit.

"I want you to--" Renée was interrupted as Neil gripped his fist and asked, "what happened? The truth."

Renée sighed and bowed her head, staring at her hands and explained, "I wrote you the letters. When you left for Carolina, Andrew was livid. He didn't eat. He didn't sleep. He did nothing but fight - he fought all the orderliness; He fought the doctors and the nurses; he was medicated more times than he could remember, his arms became so swollen by the incessant puncture of needles. There was no way he would write to you, and even if he did. It wouldn't have been anything you want to hear it would have just been… Bitterness; resentful bitterness that he felt for years. I don't know how much you missed him Neil but Andrew, he refused to miss you. He was done waiting for you to return."

Neil's fist tightened in grip, "Andrew is dead. He drank your concoction you bought, and he died."

Renée was horrified, she sobbed as she left Andrew's room because she had been caught in her deviancy. Not knowing what happened, she told Neil: "I don't care if you believe me, but after 15 years I did nothing to harm you or Andrew. I believed in you two; it had to have been Abby when she searched my bag, or the merchant who sold it to me, I always bought from him. Neil I'm so sorry--"

Neil stood up preparing to march back to Easthaven or the merchant salesman, whoever he got to first as Renée blocked his path: "if you go to Easthaven, you risk getting committed; and if the merchant is in fact a henchman for Riko, he's most likely been disposed of by Ichirou's orders of tying up loose ends." She guided his hand back to the log as he refused to sit and asked "what do you want me to do here? Where's my mother?"

Renée pointed to a cleaned up gravestone on the fourth row from the fence, seventh down from the top: "I cleaned it before you came and changed my clothes for my ritual - you're more than invited to come after." Neil didn't say anything as he walked over to the grave that chilled his bones.

MARY HARTFORD (1859-1890)

MOTHER, DAUGHTER, SISTER, WIFE.

"The prettiest flowers always got picked first."

In silent contemplation, he wondered what Andrew's would say,

ANDREW JOSEPH MINYARD (1881-1923)

BROTHER, SON, FRIEND, LOVER… INMATE… DEVIANT… QUEER

"If this is treason, let us make the most of it."

Renée stood by the entrance of Oleanders mausoleum catacombs as Neil walked over and stared at the descending staircase straight into the underground catacombs and asked "the ritual is down there?" Renée nodded as she proceeded down; Neil hesitantly put one step onto the concrete step and felt a rush of ice cold wind tingle his skin, as the temperature drop brought a wave of damp moldy scents and foul odors of dried air while the duo made their way in darkness down the incline with no light source and the trust of a woman Neil was unsure of.

Renée recalled her fishing trip during the descent, explaining how she came in contact with The Mindless God when the sailors she was with smoked opium from the Moriyama's to relieve themselves of the boredom of not being able to catch any fish. Neil halted in his steps as Renée's admission to smoking opium willfully spurred suspicions as Renée continued her story: "see, some gods like Dagon capture fish and gold for human benefits; in exchange he demands women for his children. The great race of Yith share wisdom unparalleled with humans, in exchange they demand your mind. Kavaah'mish gives power and obedience in exchange for dominion - the land, the sky, the water: it's all it wants. I don't want power, and I know when I die, heaven awaits, or whatever realms the gods dwell in so Kavaah'mish can have this world. That's why I converted, I needed more than faith and I got proof. I saw it in the opium and you never find god in drugs."

"Aren't you scared?" Neil asked cautiously as the bottom of the staircase approached. "Write your truth down. Then discard it to the ocean. That's what I did." Renée replied, "I haven't been hurt by god since. The mind is a vast emptiness of unforgiving horrors we cannot contend to, and it lurches within ourselves. Write your truth and abandon it - truth in the mind is the rain to an ocean, it can fill your reality to astronomical extents but ultimately lost in the vastness."

Neil thought if he could write his truth, he'd be free of Andrew and the fear of moving on that continued to hold him back. 

Entering the catacombs, the stench of rotted wood wafted through the air as decomposition contributed to a sickly atmosphere among the deceased, laid to rest in the dusty, cracked tombs of ancient origins. There Renée borrowed Neil's lighter and ignited a torch guiding him through the labyrinthine infrastructure as corridors melded, indistinguishable from each other as levels of descent increased, corners were turned incessantly, and the fresh air of a surfaced world was replaced with the ghastly choking breath of rank oxygen as if poisoned by the walls themselves. That feeling, the lurching pain in his stomach, cramping and stressed, returned to him as Renee took Neil by the hand down a spiraling iron staircase to the coven den; the crunch of dried insect carcasses beneath Neil's feet echoed deafeningly as the pair made their way into the ceremonial room. 

Soaking in vials of blood and green shaded formulas, rotting flesh of known and unknown entities swam in the fluids meant for ritualistic purposes as Neil clenched his stomach, attempting to control himself as his head spun in the room of shadows while Renée approached an elevated alter atop a low set of stairs and waved the torch igniting the candles revealing a monument of horrific proportions: There was a massive iron cauldron of settled fluid surrounded by the candles as the shadowy room illuminated dimly while Renée chanted and Neil stood by the entryway.

Focusing on the dimly lit architecture of the room, he wondered what purposes were served here before Renée claimed it as her ritual space. "Where are the other members?", he asked as the emptiness reeked of insecurity.

"Oh, it's just us today; usually more members arrive by the weekend and we have a banquet ceremony." Neil nodded understandingly as his instincts perked his ears attentively, drawing his attention to a distant sound one could only describe as a shift in weight upon an iron scale. The noise grew slightly louder as Neil's concentration broke when he pinpointed the origins were coming from the cauldron itself: a low guttural echo resonated throughout the catacombs - the reverberations of a throaty growl that came from aggravated dogs and bellowing livestock. The madness grew larger the deeper he had gotten in the catacombs - the sickness that laid below Arkham now found Neil in the deepest parts of the accursed city; there was the sickness, the curse of Arkham that plagued even the oxygen citizens breathed and Neil risked inhaling that curse… not all beings were human, as not all dreams were pure.

A cloth reading "ED__'S TW__IGH_ __TERY" caught Neil's attention as he shook his head in defiance, struggling to remain calm; Seth was a chef and co-owner at Eden's Twilight when he was murdered. Mysteriously his body was never recovered; the only thing known was there was blood and a struggle within his restaurants as the only evidence the police went on. They assume that Seth had been killed and his body was disposed of somewhere in the Arkham Countrywide.  _ So what was it doing in the catacombs?  _ Neil thought. Before he could inquire, "Neil" Renée's eyes greyed before his own as she grabbed his attention, "it has to eat."

"What?"

"Seth was sacrificed if you're wondering, no point in hiding the truth - Riko needed to feed it, and Seth aggravated him that week."

"Feed what?" Neil asked, only assuming dozens of Arkham residents that disappeared Mysteriously or were murdered by the Moriyama clan were also sacrificed to whatever monstrosity lay beneath Oleanders graveyard. One can only hope that there was closure for Matt.

"Kavaah'mish" she whispered, "as plovers feed from within the crocodile's mouth without fear of being eaten, I too have found the symbiotic wisdom of worshipping the Moriyama's secret."

Renée, whose pink and blue hair seemingly changed at the will of the low guttural moan to a sharp red with deeply purpled strands, had disrobed herself entirely - a pile consisting of her robes and bandages fluttered in the chilled catacomb breeze commanded by the towering altar. Naked and kowtowing before the cauldron the cult longed to worship, she spoke of Kavaah'mish; whispers in her breath of the Monster of Evermore, coming to Arkham with the prosperous sale of the Moriyama's opium.

Riko, Neil had deduced, brought the plague of Kavaah'mish, sickening an already deathly gross town.  _ Kavaah'mish, feeder of the light minded, manipulator of the addicted _ , Renée chanted, a creature whose origins Kevin knew rumours of, but did not reveal out of arrogant spite - what he could not understand, he was not willing to know. More octopode than flesh, the being slithered its heavy gelatinous body out of the fluids it was submerged in, bellowing a gritty lowliness as Josten crept backwards past Renée and her convulsive praying as Kavaah'mish lurched forward from its cauldron throne.

Panicked beads of sweat drenched Neil's coldly frozen body as he tumbled over his feet, struggling in the dim room to understand what he saw: An anthropomorphized, otherworldly being, whose legs were multitudes of wrinkled grey tentacles upon tentacles, attaching to a humanized body; in replacement of a nose, eyelids, and lips, punctured through the globulous skin, were thick slime accumulated tentacles covering the eyes and mouth of its horrendous face; the same was applied to the monster's arms and what could only been understood by Neil as coiled, tentacled arms, webbed and hooked with scaly claws. One arm stretched out, Neil was shook as a sharp screech began piercing his inner ears, like whistling air scraping its way through metal as the cauldron fell off its stand, cracking under pressure as it caved to the combined weight of the liquid and monstrosity - Neil could not tell where one or the other ended, as the splashing fluids quickly outed the shrine's candles, leaving Neil and it in the pitch black.

Shuddering in the eternal darkness, Neil could hear the sludging drag of the legs, as both moving beings tried to find their bearings in the dark basement before the other. Tentacled and bulbous, the beast lifted the tentacles that served as eyelids, revealing four sickly yellow, puss-coloured eyes, dripping in green mucus - two eyeballs in each socket - all staring deep into Neil's eyes, his beige coat flapping in the airy breeze as the drooping tentacle that covered what was a bottom lip parted from the diametrically opposed upper lipped tentacle and smokey air hazily floated out of its voided, protruding toothed jaw. Neil began feeling the hazy lightheadedness he felt on the boat that first approached Arkham.

_ Granulated opium _ Neil remembered Andrew referring to his "cracker dust" as:  _ could it be the opium was just a ruse, for Kavaah'mish to spread its sickly influence? Renée didn't know any better - sad and pathetic - she looked for a new god when hers abandoned the Walker family. _

Coinciding with Riko's attempt to take over Arkham from Mayor Day, Kavaah'mish had the confluences of fate it needed to spread its poison breathty gas, granulated into opium to dull the minds of Arkham residents. Malevolent gods using humans for their own nefarious purposes of domination. And Neil was its latest victim as he scrambled towards the staircase, flicking his lighter to spark an indication of a way out, all while the beast proceeded. Stumbling over tables and stools, clumsily canting over glass vials in the dark, Neil was stunted by a sudden crunching, shattering the panic and introducing fear: genuine mortal terror. On her scarred legs, tasting the holy, unbandaged blood she shed for Kavaah'mish's sacrificial resurrection, Renée was consumed violent as she let out a sudden yelp before gurgling blood in her throat while the blackness of the mouth consumed the young priestess; her hair turned black, then white in the death of a sudden bone breaking crunch.

Neil scrambles for his life out the entranceway, back up the iron incline, through the corridors of endlessness, sprinting through the darkness as the squeal of mice darted aside his striding feet, the slosh of puddles indicating Kavaah'mish had once slithered along this hall. A camorous destruction of stone and splintering wood bellowed through the catacombs as a torrential wave of unending belches rang through Neil's ears - the gelatinous sloshing rushed through the winding halls as he struggled to breathe, gasping as his hyperventilated breath stirred a lightheartedness.  _ Not now _ Neil thought, _ I need adrenaline  _ as his clothes torn at the jagged cracks in an attempt to force his minuscule body into a crevice that claustrophobically constricted his airflow: the scratching of concrete got louder as Neil, unwise as it was, began holding his breath; it seemed most vital an option though Neil's arms became numb from the restricted circulation… he couldn't react in time, limitedly glancing at the shadowy passage of a gargantuan figure through the darkened opening of his crevice… as he blacked out… in the crevice of the catacombs and dreamed:

_ The melted burning of faces, unrecognizable waxes poured through molten muscle _

_ The throbbing headache _

_ Ringing my ears as the throbbing bellows deafened my senses  _

_ I was lost in a myriad of confusion among The flickering forgotten lights _

_ These plague symptoms, rushing like water showered down on your body _

_ The vestigial fetus of tentacled origins, spawned by egg, summoned by dust. _

_ Europa's black cosmos pierced and filled with blood. _

_ you are among the dead as you always have been _

_ Dead dreams _

_ dead fathers _

_ mothers _

_ And now lovers. _

Neil jolted awake and instinctively pushed his way out of the crevice into the empty silence of the catacomb tombs and checked his watch: 4:33AM, Kavaah'mish didn't find him as he brushed his dream off to nothing more than serotonin rushes. Neil knew his minutes were limited so he made a plan in his mind to try and sneak out of the dawning city.


	9. CHAPTER 9.

CHAPTER 9

Neil slowly scuffles his way out of the catacombs, feeling his way along the darkened walls eventually touching the familiar black ooze from Evermore… _Kavaah'mish had been at the compound?_ Neil had no time to contemplate the location of the unholy entity as he soon came across the lengthy incline and ascended back to the sleeping city, standing among the graves hoping to find sanctuary.

Remembering the merchant's advice of quick navigation through the alley streets of Arkham, Neil found himself on an empty street, foggy and chilled, the only recognizable building was the copper brown bricks of the Dunwich hotel - making his way through the lobby, Katelyn was not there as he proceeded to his room and gathered his smallest suitcase of clothes and stuffed what he had into it; Katelyn left the most recent newspaper on his bed and a note that read

_"You might want to thank mayor Day."_

and Neil stuffed the paper into his case without hesitation and left his room as disheveled as he found it and made his way back to the streets.

Heading down Cane street, turning left on Ich avenue, proceeding through the back alley behind the tailor shop, Neil saw the docks and planned to board a vessel: taking any chance to sail away. The air, as Neil got closer to the docks was warm, unnaturally warm for Arkham - the same warmth Wymack felt before the raiding natives, the same warmth Neil felt as he left the asylum after Andrew ingested the opium - it all felt connected, the change in weather… _the calm before the storm._

Running past The Black Rod, Neil made one final attempt looking behind to see the friends and loved ones and life that he had known Left Behind once again. Staring at the corner of his eye, He saw The Black Rod's mold covered doors of green slick moss and remembered walking in and seeing Matt for the first time in 15 years and it felt like yesterday, as if no time had passed at all, as if Neil had lived just down the road and seeing the patrons every day was no big deal. He admitted he was going to miss this life, but he had no time for Tears as from the behind, appearing down the street, there were a staggering group of individuals each with glazed glossy looks over their eyes as they hobbled and whispered in breathy coarseness: _apprehend him. Don't let him Escape._ As the lumbering stagger of drugged citizens from the asylum and opium dens crawled zombified towards Neil, The creature, through unknown means conveyed its aggression to Neil in dry throaty whispers of various individuals: _seize him! Don't let him escape! The boats, he's going for the boats!_ Trampling echoes of voices in a cacophony of stress repeated _the boats_ as if to goad Neil into finding an alternative route.

Within the crowd Neil saw the behemoth Kavaah'mish lurking sluggishly. The aggressive Pace that the creature took whilst in the catacombs had now been reduced to a sloth like Lumber as it merely staggered through the crowd of individuals, knocking whoever was its way under the weight of its own tentacled feet and crushing them to death. _It was weak_ . Something, someone, somehow… The creature had been weakened and was merely trying to capture Neil in an attempt to regain strength, sustenance, or simply to eliminate a potential problem for its existence, _but why?_ Why would a creature so staggeringly tall, so staggeringly massive, so immensely powerful and influential among the world of men, be reduced to such desperate weakness so quickly.

Neil had no time to think as he bolted down towards the docks noticing that the Foxhole ship was being loaded. The time was 5:32AM as Neil made eye contact with Wymack, who had apparently started loading the ship under the moonlit glow of the midnight sun and were on the verge of leaving by the crack of dawn: the first sign of Daybreak they were going to hit the ocean. Neil ran towards the ship, refusing to look behind him, refusing to stop for anyone or any reason; for anything, even if Andrew was standing before him, Neil would keep running. He would run towards the Foxhole, run towards safety, to what he could only assume was his Escape back to normalcy out of the terror that he once called home; out of the terror where he fell in love; out of the terror that brought him running till his heart and lungs begged him to stop - till his legs gave out and he began to stumble upon the cobblestone roads. Barely holding on to his briefcase, he kept running; running from the city, running from Andrew, running from the monstrous crowds and alien creatures behind him. He would run back to South Carolina: back to the Foxhole, back to what he knew best. He ran.

Wymack pointed his rifle at Neil as the lumbering crowd of drugged servants strode towards the docks in dozens; "Captain Wymack, it's Neil, I need to board with you."

"How can I know you're not one of them?" Wymack cocked his rifle unhesitatingly.

Neil walked closer to Wymack unflinchingly, pointing to his eyes to be checked, Wymack then examined the young man's eyes before letting him on board, correlating the pupil's greying as a sign of misfortunate outcomes.

As Wymack's crew hoisted the anchor and departed from the docks, the slow chug of the coal burnt engines rumbled underwater as Neil sat upon a bench staring longingly for all he left behind. The captain leaned on the adjacent railing and exchanged information with Neil staring at the fumbling masses of Arkham residents pacing the docks clumsily.

Neil broke the silence between the two: "The vapor from the Smoky breath of the monster that the Moriyama's worshipped is granulated into the opium used to brainwash the people of Arkham."

Wymack nodded agreeingly, "that's word of the crew I got from the opium den patrons. Tis' why the creature is known to have control over those who smoke the Opium and become mindless themselves. Poor petulant fools! Opium filled the lungs of all who smoked it, and with it came the diseased curse of Kavaah'mish. Infecting the minds of those to do his bidding."

"When did you know this?" Neil pondered.

"The crew, they get silver tongue devils in their families. Intoxication is easy to manipulate. Kavaah'mish, Evermore, fools tell all when you buy their drugs."

Neil placed his suitcase by his side, leaning against the rail and stared at the yellowing glow of the setting moon: "The Moriyama's had a long line of worshiping the eldritch horrors from the moon of Europa. Kavaah'mish traveled to earth and bestowed a hedonistic pleasure to mankind: stronger than normal opium granulated from the ethereal breath of Kavaah'mish."

"That would explain why my encounter with the island natives went so horribly - Kavaah'mish was controlling all who intaked the drugs", Wymack chuckled, "here I thought the fools were hallucinating!" The roaring laughter calmed Neil as Wymack faced the absurd void of existence with joy. As the crowd of mindlessly drugged citizens stood on the docks, fading in the increasing growth of the horizon, Kavaah'mish had vanished, dissipating from the crowd.

Neil, opening the suitcase on his lap, pulled out a page and pen, and taking Renée's advice, he would write his truth and permanently discard it into the water, like rain in the ocean. Neil wrote his final Letter to Andrew as the crew set a course out through the vast Atlantic:

_Dearest lover, is it insanity to dream of death? A painful stinging of one's flesh and nerves, matched only by the lonesome sting of cracked, moldy walls closing in on your psyche upon one's heart? Lusting for relief. I fear I am not long for this world, my love, my friend, my light through the cracks of the asylum that traps my silence; a silence broken by the pattering of rain, accompanied like drums to an orchestra, by the screams of the insane of which I fear to become myself. Through madness and sanity I am forever yours, Andrew Minyard. Your name stings my heart when I come to think I have let you down. If we could start again, I would've taken you to Germany, but you have gone away to where I cannot follow and now I am alone in the end. Goodbye my nothing. Neil Minyard, August 1923._

Neil, seeing nothing was left for him in Arkham, convinced Wymack to voyage for Germany on the Foxhole with whatever crewmates hadn't ingested the drug, as Neil and Wymack looked at each other from across the desolate barge, they sailed towards the open seas. "What business did you have in Arkham? Visiting friends?" A burly haired man tying rope knots asked the out-of-place Josten. Neil replied despondently "I knew people, doesn't mean we're friends" trying to convince himself more so, than the inquisitive sailor.

Neil, rummaged through his suitcase, and noticed a newspaper highlighting the news of previous day; Katelyn, the hotel staff left on his clothes with a note - he specifically glanced over an article about a council meeting Mayor Kevin Day had after Neil had left to The Black Rod.

The day, when Neil was in the catacombs all night, Mayor Day convinced the city council to vote for an Opium taskforce, the same afternoon, they stormed Castle Evermore in the countryside, killing deathless Tetsuji, who against all signs of self preservation, defended the opium till he died.

The officials in gas masks burnt the opium, destroying it all and thus Neil deduced: the monster would only remain in Arkham as long as the opium remained in the citizen's lungs then it would leave, fading into the obscure mythology that shaped Arkham. The vanishing beastial horror on the docks was weakened and fading.

The paper which held Tetsuji's obituary read: 1827-1923

Ichirou's underneath read: 1880-1923. He ran through the bramble wilderness, chased by Kevin and the Opium Taskforce before being gunned down by Kevin's orders.

Riko had taken his own life after being found among bodies of executed children. 1892-1923.

 _Coward, monster, until the pathetic end_ Neil thought, sitting in contemplative silence as he reflected on his losses: Renée, Andrew, Seth, Dan... Matt and Allison never to see him again. Kevin would go on to run on his conquest of the opium trafficking as his reelection campaign. Everyone would find closure that drives them deeper into the embrace of Arkham, or like Neil himself, abandon the city that took everything. An odd wave of peace settled over him and the crew.

Rattling noises came from below the ship's deck as Wymack broke the boom of the Foxhole's deafening chug, asking a crewmate to make sure the barrels were all secure; the crewmate returned and said there was a barrel of opium that busted in the lower decks of the ship.

Neil froze in terror as he remembered his time at Oleanders: _Kavaah'mish went wherever the opium had gone_. Before Wymack could confirm, before the startled crew could react, there was a force of pressure pressing against the planks of the ship's starboard.

A webbed, tentacled arm rose over the side of the ship and clawed nails latched onto the deck. Neil stood in horror as the crew scrambled for a fight, grabbing harpoons, violently piercing the unphased gelatinous flesh, though he soon saw the familiar white misty smoke rising up from the sea as the crewmates began to fumble under the haze, lowering their weapons in exhaustion; they staggered mindlessly towards Neil while from within the growing fog, four yellow eyes glowed in malevolence.


End file.
